asked in a cheery voice, as he put down one or two books and a bundle of
proofs damp from the printer's, end drew off his fur-lined gloves.
'Does she not speak German with wonderful verve? She is still here?
Ah, that is good--that is good. I thought she would find Kleinsauber's
"Comparative Ethnology" a fascinating work. You see, with all her
vivacity, she has an unusual love of knowledge. In that she is like
your sister Amalie--a combination which is, above all others, calculated
to make a woman happy.'
'Very true,' answered Langdale gravely. And then he told the Professor
that the Australian lady seemed suddenly indisposed--that he feared she
was far from well.
'Ah, now that you speak of it, I have thought each time I saw her that
she was greatly paler and thinner. Oh, she is staying only a few houses
away. Her husband is in London. She must come and stay with us as soon
as your mother returns.'
The good Professor hurried into the study. 'My dear young lady, you are
not well. Perhaps you have been reading Kleinsauber's book too closely.
You saw it the moment you came in, of course--here on the table? It is
wonderful! wonderful!' etc.
The kind, benevolent old face, bending over her with anxious solicitude,
helped Stella a little to recall her straying faculties.
When she spoke of going, the Professor proposed to get a hackney
carriage, but Stella said the little walk through the fresh air would
revive her. The Professor and Langdale walked with her to the pension,
and she bade them good-bye at the door, saying that she would be better
on the morrow. Early next day Langdale received the two fatal letters,
which Stella enclosed with the words: 'To-day I cannot see very well,
nor think. Things are going away from me. I only know I will do
whatever you wish.'
That night she was prostrated with acute fever. She lay for weeks
hovering between life and death. Time after time the crisis seemed to
have passed; but a disastrous wave of recollection would sweep over her;
and then the fever re-asserted itself once more. But in the end her
youth and hitherto unbroken physique triumphed. She struggled back to
life shaken and wasted. Day by day she gained a little strength. But
mentally a strange change had been wrought. She remembered all that had
passed, but the sources of emotion seemed atrophied. It was like a
moral aphasia. She had forgotten how to feel; and she shrank from the
possibility of mental suffering with a certain morbid horror. All the
passion and ardour and power of vivid emotion had left her. If she
could be glad for anything, she would have been glad that now at last
she knew what it was to have a sluggish nature--a heart equally steeled
against hope and memory.
*CHAPTER L.*
It was mid-day in Berlin on the last day of February. After a succession
of stormy days of unusual severity a hard frost set in, which had lasted
now nearly a week. The Thiergarten, all save the footpaths, was deep in
snow, crisp, glittering, and frozen over. The trees, to the tips of the
slenderest twigs, were thickly frosted, and gleaming in their coating of
unspotted purity. But the keen, clear sky, which had lent such
brilliancy to the frost for some days, was now completely overcast.
Another storm was evidently gathering. The heavens wondrously low down
were unbroken in their heavy sombreness--a sullen background piled up
with heavy banks of purplish-black clouds and vapoury masses of
dun-coloured smoke. There was not a break nor a rift--not even a tone
of paler gray or lead colour--to show where behind all the sun must
somewhere be shining.
The contrast between the lowering sky and the trees in their gleaming
delicate white splendour made up a wonderful scene for eyes that had
never before seen any of the moods of a northern winter. Stella, who
had by this time passed the first stage of convalescence, sat by one of
the large double windows of their sitting-room in the Eisengau pension
looking at the scene with an impassive gaze. A book lay open on a table
near her--some needlework had fallen to her feet, where Dustiefoot lay,
alternately dozing off into a light slumber, and looking up at his
mistress as if longing for some sign of recognition.
Ritchie sat near the open fireplace, the only one in the house, and
constructed for an English invalid who had stayed there for a couple of
years some time previously. There was a glowing coal fire whose lambent
flames were joyously thrown back by blue-and-white tiles that lined the
fireplace, each with figures more or less classic or symbolical. Ritchie
looked up from the sporting newspaper he was reading and stared into the
fire for some time with knitted brows. Then his eyes rested on some of
these figures with a look of marked disapproval.
'I say, Stella.'
She turned round with a start.
'I wish you would come and tell me what some of these old hags are
doing, or what they mean. Just look at this one with a stick something
like a stock-whip handle, and a shock of wool on it.'
He placed a chair for Stella, and she looked at the figure he pointed
out with a slow smile breaking on her face.
'Why, that is Clotho, one of the Parcae--the inexorable sisters, the
daughters of night and darkness----'
'Well, that is all Greek to me. Why do people put three sulky-looking
females round a fireplace--one with a rum sort of stick, the other with
a ball of twine, and this savage-looking old party with a pair of
shears, as if she were going to cut a fellow's jugular vein?'
'That is her _metier_--her trade. You must know the old Greeks had many
tales and symbols of man's life. These are the three Fates--mysterious
women who preside over our destinies. Clotho with her spindle spins the
thread of life, Lachesis measures its length, and Atropos with the
abhorred shears cuts it short.'
'Then, according to that, this is the old vixen who nearly did for you,
Stella. Look at the squint of the old banshee.... Thank God she didn't
have a snip at you with her shears this time, Stella.'
'But it would have been so much easier to die than come back bit by bit
so weak and shaken. I remember I had an old doll once I was very fond
of. Its hair fell off, and the blue came out of its eyes, and its
complexion disappeared altogether. Last of all, a kangaroo pup of Tom's
ran away with it, and took its head off, and I never found it again. But
I got the head of another defunct doll, and I got Tom to fasten it on to
Sheba somehow. I feel just as she must have felt. Ted, are you sure
that Dr. Seemann did not screw someone else's head on me?'
'When you talk to me a little I am quite sure he didn't. But, by Jove!
Stella, it was an awful close shave. I had just got hack from the old
man's funeral, and was going into the dining-room to hear the will read
when I got the telegram Maisie' sent, and for a bit I thought to myself,
"It's all U P, old man." For though I didn't say much, I could see you
were awfully ill all the time. Once on board ship a fellow who was very
ill--he hadn't come out of his cabin the first two weeks--was with me on
the deck the first day he came up. We had got pretty chummy, for his
cabin was next to mine, and I often did little things for him--roused up
the doctor once when poor old Lakemann seemed to be choking. Well, we
were walking up and down, and he spied you sitting back and looking away
over the sea--one of the Miss O'Briens near you. "Who is that lady?"
says he, and I saw he was looking at you. "That is my wife," said I.
"No," said he, "I don't mean that lively-looking young lady. I could
almost tell without being told she is your wife. I mean that one
leaning back, looking exactly like a sleep-walker. She must have seen a
ghost some time." He would hardly believe I wasn't putting a hoax on
him when I said you were my wife, and not Miss Harry O'Brien. Many a
time after that I thought you did just look as if you were awake in your
sleep--no, sleeping awake. Oh bother, you know what I mean.'
'Yes; but you must think of something more lively to tell me. I am very
tired of myself, Ted.'
'Oh, but I want to talk a little about yourself, Stella. Always when I
want to talk to you, since you got well enough to speak, someone is in
the way, or you are not up, or you have gone to bed, or there is a
silent fit on you--and old Seemann said to me: "Don't make her talk when
she doesn't want to till she is built up"--as if you were a wall or a
chimney.'
'Has it been very dull for you in Berlin all these weeks, Ted?'
'Well, it didn't matter to me a straw where I was while you were so ill,
Stella. But since you've been out of danger I've been toddling round.
You see, I know several fellows now. The Avenells came across in the
same boat with me. Dick, the eldest of them, is in the British
embassy--an attache they call it. He speaks of his duties, but as far
as I can make out, his work is to always wear a neat suit and a flower
in his buttonhole, and play scat and billiards. Of course he has to go
to dinner-parties and balls, and the worst of it is he often has to
dance attendance on a fat old frump half the night, instead of looking
after some pretty girl. That's the very worst aspect of diplomacy, he
says. And then Farningham here is very good company--at any rate, he's
the sort I get on with. And you like Mrs. Farningham?'
'Yes, very much,' returned Stella, but her voice all the time was
perfectly level and emotionless.
'Is it Farningham or his wife that is related to the old Professor you
met at Dr. Stein's?'
'It is Mrs. Farningham. Her mother is married to the Professor.'
'And there was a Dr. Langdale--who came from the Professor's every day,
sometimes twice, to ask for you, till you were out of danger--isn't he
another relation of Mrs. Farningham's?'
'Her brother.' She shivered a little as if she were cold, and Ted
heaped more coal on the fire.
'Ah, now I begin to get things a little straight. I've sometimes been
most awfully mixed up. "My wife's father-in-law," Farningham says, "my
stepchildren," "my wife's stepfather," "my mother-in-law," "my wife's
mother-in-law," "my brother-in-law," "my wife's brother-in-law," just
like one of those affairs like a little telescope you turn round, and
see different snaps of things spluttering at you every blessed shake.
You see Mrs. Farningham's first husband's people are here from America
in shoals. It's a jolly good thing there wasn't room for many of them
in this pension.'
'Why--don't you like them?'
'Oh, I'd like them well enough, if there weren't so many women among
them, with not a blessed turn to do but ask a fellow
questions--clatter-clatter all the time, like a bell on a runaway steer.
There's one of them a tall, thin woman, with eyes like knitting-pins.
She's got about twenty hairs on her scalp, and twenty skewers to keep
them in a tiny bob on top of her head, leaving her long, lean neck
perfectly bare. I'm not what you'd call a prude, you know, but, by
George, the nakedness of that neck gives me a sort of a turn! She
writes for two newspapers, and she has a red morocco sort of book, with
an indelible pencil, and sometimes she stops in the middle of eating her
soup to put something down in this. "I dare not trust my memory, it's
so treacherous," she says. "By the Lord," thinks I to myself, "I wish
it were so treacherous you'd forget to ask me questions!" Yes, I sit
next to her at the table-d'hote, and there she goes at me hammer and
tongs. And the less I know about the things she's interested in, the
more I catch her using the indelible pencil on the sly. "Now, Mr.
Ritchie, you are laughing at me, when you say you _never_ heard of
Raphael or Michael Angelo," she'll say, screwing her long neck round
above my head, like a native companion in a fit. Ah, she's yards taller
than I am. Wait till you see her. And there Farningham sits on the
opposite side of the table, grinning at me like a negro minstrel. Let me
see, she's his wife's first husband's first cousin's aunt once removed.
Now what relation would you say she is to Farningham?'
'I really haven't the faintest conception,' returned Stella, with a
little smile.
'No more has he. But she calls him Charles, and speaks to him solemnly
about the privileged classes in England. You know he is to be Sir
Charles F. when his governor dies. And then she reminds him of things
that happened to his wife's first husband, as if he were the one, you
know. Now, I call that deuced awkward; at any rate, it might be in many
cases. I dare say it would be more damaging to the other fellow though,
if Farningham had been the first husband. They say Mrs. Farningham's
eldest boy by her first husband will be a millionaire when he is
twenty-one; but he is a delicate little chap. Am I talking too much,
Stella?'
'Oh no; it's rather amusing. I thought by something Mrs. Farningham let
fall that some of her American connections were a little trying. But
she did not say much; she's very loyal to them.'
'She's a regular trump. She says the right thing to everybody; and
she's like you, Stella, she never gets the least ruffled--never sticks
her back up, but takes everything as if it were rather fun. She had a
bad illness in Dresden, but she has got over it so well--she's better
than she was before. I wish you were like that. What does old Seemann
mean by some mischief before the fever came on? Was it--was it that
shock, Stella? You know what I mean.'
She put up her hands to her head wearily. 'I know what you mean, Ted.
But there was something besides that: and the day I was taken ill it
came all over again, but worse; only nothing seems very bad now. I do
not think I should talk about things that used to hurt me. It cannot be
helped any more; nothing can that has gone really wrong.' She gave a
long, low sigh, and lay back with closed eyes.
'Don't say that, Stella, please,' said Ted gently. 'It was awfully
steep to think I was the cause of all when your life hung on a thread.
I used to go to the opera and places; but often I didn't know whether I
was standing on my head or my heels.'
'You are not to blame for my illness, Ted. If anyone is to blame, it is
Laurette; but I myself most of all. Oh, I don't mean what she concealed
about you.'
Ted looked perplexed, but he would ask no questions; and, indeed, he
attributed Stella's words to some confusion left by the fever. It may
be noted in passing, that Stella did not once suspect him of any
complicity in the imposition that had wrecked her life. Only at this
period she would have rejected the word 'wrecked' as being too strong.
Everything had shrunk so inconceivably. It was as though nothing
mattered very much, if only one were left in perfect quiet.
'Dr. Seemann is to come only every second day now, he told me,' said
Ted, in a cheerful voice. 'What a stunning old chap he is! The best
fever doctor in Berlin, they say; and you can't easily beat that. It
was the Professor who saw to his attending you.'
There was silence for a few moments, and then Stella said very slowly:
'Do you know when Dr. Langdale came to Berlin?' She named him without
the least tremor.
'No; but I remember the first time I noticed him particularly. It was
two weeks after I came back. I was at the opera-house, with Dick
Avenell. We went out into the wide passage behind the boxes, and there
Dick met a couple of very lively little French ladies. I don't think
they were any better than they ought to be, you know--nothing but a
couple of roses and a dagger with diamonds in the handle by way of a
bodice. Dick swore I had just come from New Caledonia, and had brought
a message from some of their friends there. After a little time, he
dodged round a pillar all at once, and left me talking to them alone; at
least, they were jabbering away, half in French; and I put in a word
edgeways, now and then, in English, but I'm blessed if I could tell what
any of us were saying. In the middle of it, who should come round but
this Dr. Langdale, with his mother! I had seen him once or twice when
he came to inquire after you for the Kellwitzes, and he stared hard at
me, I can tell you. I didn't know his name till Farningham told me. It
seems he's been in Australia for a little time; and he has been a good
deal off colour, too, in Berlin. He went to Vienna last week, to see a
chum of his who is making a great noise with some operations on eyes, so
Farningham told me. It was lucky the Farninghams came here, a few days
after I got back from London. I've gone about with him a good deal, and
with Dick and his brother Minimus--comical name, isn't it? Comes of
three brothers being at a public school together. Now, why do you
suppose Dick left me in the lurch like that? He told me plump it was
because he saw an old dowager-aunt of a girl he's sweet on, coming our
way, and he couldn't afford to be seen with the little Frenchies. A
married man, said he, with no end of tin, can stand any racket; but a
penniless attache has to be deuced proper when on parade. Wasn't that a
friendly trick to play a fellow? But he and Minimus are awful fun
sometimes. Minimus is supposed to be studying Oriental languages for a
"diplomatic career" in India. "People teach languages so much better in
Germany," he says; and he goes once a month, perhaps, to an old chap,
who swears at him because he is an idle young dog, and makes an
appointment with him to come next week to learn some alphabet; but Min.
doesn't, as a rule, turn up. He says I'd better give him a billet on my
run; he thinks it would be much jollier than spoiling his eyes over
rubbishy Eastern pot-hooks. I've often been more miserable than a
tuckerless dingo; but still I went to theatres and things. I couldn't
nurse you, Stella, you see!'
'Of course not. It was much better you should go about.'
'But now I can look after you a bit, Stella; and that little Maisie--by
George, she's worth her weight in gold!'
There was a knock at the door; and in response to Ritchie's robust
invitation to come in, a fair, youthful-looking man entered, slight, and
rather under the middle height.
'Are you allowed to see people so early in the day, Mrs. Ritchie? Why,
this is quite the Darby-and-Joan business--and an open fireplace, I
declare!'
'Yes; and the three inexorable sisters--daughters of Night and
Darkness--with the spindle-and-shears business, Farningham!' said Ted,
with a dignified wave of his hand towards the tiles.
'Why, Ritchie, old fellow, you're coming it strong with the classics.
Do tell that to Miss Caroline Sendler. You must know, Mrs. Ritchie,
that your husband is carrying on a barefaced flirtation with an elderly
lady from America--one related to me in some mystical way!'
'I remember. She's your wife's first----'
'Don't--don't, my dear fellow. Let it remain with the dark riddles of a
world not realized. You are really making progress now, Mrs. Ritchie?'
'Oh yes, thank you. To-day, I quite know the people from the trees.'
'And do you eat anything? Because I have heard dreadful tales on that
score.'
'Now, Stella, tell the truth. Yesterday, you looked at the thigh of a
pigeon, and said, "Oh, take it away--it looks so dreadfully pathetic!"
And that was your dinner. Yes, upon my honour, Farningham, I had to
take it away; and a little while afterwards, when Fraeulein--what's her
name, the nurse you know?--came in with a little soup, Signora here
said, without blinking, "But I've had dinner, you know!"'
'Ah, but that sort of thing will never do. My wife declares she ate all
day when she was getting well. And that reminds me why I came!'
'Now you really wound me. I thought it was to find out whether I ate
anything,' said Stella, with a little of her old sprightliness.
'So it was; but merely to knock at the door and inquire, and then ask if
my wife might come. But this young man was too lazy to open the door,
as Fraeulein Hennig does. And you look so jolly and cosy, one can't tear
one's self away. Now I know why Amalie and I have given up being
domesticated. It's the absence of an open fireplace!'
At this juncture another knock was heard at the door, which was speedily
opened.
'May I come in?' said a flute-like woman's voice.
It was Mrs. Farningbam: a tall, graceful woman, with dark eyes and hair,
a clear pale skin, a delicately aquiline nose, and an exquisitely
chiselled mouth. In feature there was a strong resemblance between her
and Langdale, and also at times in expression.
'Ah, you are really better this morning!' she said, taking Stella's
hand, and giving Ted a friendly nod.
'I was on the eve of coming to tell you,' said her husband. 'But I
suppose I'd better stay a little longer, and then our family circle will
be completed by the babies and--collateral branches! You'd better send
me away, Mrs. Ritchie; for I assure you there is absolutely no end to
us! And will you forgive me if I carry your husband off? I am always
hiring or buying or exchanging horses; and I always get "choused," he
says, if I am alone!'
'Hadn't I better take Dustiefoot for a run, Stella? ... Lose him?
That's more than my place is worth. You may be sure I won't come back
without him. Out, boy, out!'
But though Dustiefoot rose up with alacrity at the sound, he got no
farther than the door, till he ran back, and put his head on his
mistress's lap, looking up fondly into her face.
'Out, Dustiefoot--out!' said Stella; and on this the dog trotted away.
When the two men were gone, Mrs. Farningham drew her chair nearer
Stella's, saying;
'How did you sleep last night, dear?'
'Tolerably well, thank you, for two or three hours.'
'And after that?'
'Oh, then it was the old stupid story. Endless processions of people
filing by, as if I were a mummy holding a levee.'
'And that chamber into which you dare not peep--does it still remain?'
'Yes; and myriads of voices high and low telling me to pass in--but they
get fainter night by night. Now, when I waken up in the soft light and
see Fraeulein Hennig's quiet face, I do not any longer feel like a
terrified child that covers its head and trembles because of ghost
stories it has heard.'
'Ah, that is a great stage. This is your first serious illness. For
the first time you know something of the terror of demoralized nerves.
But now that you begin to regain tranquillity the worst is over.'
'Do you think so? I am glad to feel so unmoved; but sometimes--I hardly
know why--it frightens me a little that all which used to be so much to
me seems so incredibly remote.'
'Oh, that is merely brain exhaustion. As you get stronger--as you are
"built up," to use Dr. Seemann'a words--the old interests will revive.'
*CHAPTER LI.*
Mrs. Farningham's prediction was, unfortunately, not verified. Stella's
strength slowly returned, but her mental condition remained much the
same. As the weeks went on she became, if anything, more silent, more
apathetic. The first event that roused her had also the effect of
bringing on a feverish attack. It was a great concert given in the
Philharmonic Hall in Bernburger Strasse. The conductor and violin
soloist were the first of Germany, supported by the full strength of the
Philharmonic orchestra. But what made this concert especially
interesting was that a 'Sinfonische Dichtung,' the composition of an
Italian musician, was to be rendered for the first time--the music
being, in fact, still unpublished.
The theme is taken from the 'Divine Comedy.' It is the love-tragedy of
Francesca Polenta, named da Rimini, and of Paolo Malatesta. It begins
in the second circle of hell, guarded by Minos, who, at the entrance,
weighs each transgression, and fixes the grade to which the ill-fated
spirit shall be thrust. Deep, slow, mysterious waves of music thrilled
the mind with a sudden apprehension of the gloom unpenetrated by the
faintest ray of light. Then very slowly there rose, as if in the far
distance, the howling of that terrible storm of hell--growing fierce and
wild and discordant, as if the sea were riven into mountains and abysmal
depths by two opposing tempests, and high above all the cries of lost
souls.
After the storm of the elements and of tortured souls falls shudderingly
into silence, the compassionate voice of the poet arises as he asks the
two who clung together even in hell itself, 'O anime affannate, venite a
noi parlar, s'altri vol niega'--'O ye tired souls, come speak to us, if
no one doth forbid it.' Then came the low, anguished, wailing sound of
a woman's voice telling her sinful love-story in eternal torment. No
sound in life or Nature can surely ever reproduce the piercing pathos of
a human voice in hopeless misery like the violin under the touch of a
great master.