There were many eyes dimmed among the audience when the heart-broken
confession was translated into passionate, shuddering music. The
symphony from beginning to end made a strange impression upon Stella.
And as in the leading theme the musician had cunningly woven the story
of Lancelot, whose love, too skilfully told by the old romancer, had
been such dangerous reading, so, through all the storm of darkness and
despair, through the inexorable remembrance of an hour when
overmastering passion trampled duty under foot, Stella was conscious of
piercing recollections rising in her brain, which since her illness had
no more power to move her than if they were idle spiders' strings. But
now they were aflame with vivid terrible life. That woman's voice,
pleading, broken, despairing, arose in fitful tones, making the blood
start vehemently in her veins--making her shrink and tremble like a
creature upon whom suddenly a great burden has been laid.
'It has been too much for you,' whispered Mrs. Farningham. 'Let me take
you home now....'
'Yes, I really want to leave before anything else drives away the memory
of this.'
That night Stella woke, weeping bitterly. In her dreams by night she
had been listening over again to the hopeless wailing story told by
Francesca to Dante. For days afterwards the fever burned in her veins;
and when this passed away she began to avoid people--to shrink from
meeting them. She began to walk out a little; but she preferred to go
alone to the Thiergarten, with only Dustiefoot as a companion. Even
Maisie's presence seemed a trouble to her. When she was with others she
had the air of one trying unsuccessfully to understand what was going on
around her. She sometimes fell asleep in the daytime, and seemed to
wander for years in a strange dark land beset with vague shapes of
dread, and then woke up with a start to find her momentary slumbers had
not been noticed. She began to confound events with visions of the
night. Things that had been said or done in the morning would seem at
nightfall to be separated from her by vast tracts of time. She began to
have a dread that she could not grasp what people said to her.
One forenoon, as she was alone in the Thiergarten, near the great
monument of the nation's victory over France, she suddenly met Professor
and Mrs. Kellwitz. She looked so timid and startled--almost so
confused--on seeing them, that Mrs. Kellwitz's motherly heart was wrung
with a sudden dread. She knew that Farningham, her son-in-law, and
Ritchie had gone to Homburg together for a week. Yet no one who knew the
position of affairs could charge Ted with neglect. He was simply like
one who looked on helpless and perplexed. He was always ready at
Stella's command; but she had none to give. He was anxious to take her
anywhere and everywhere; but she had no wishes except to be left alone.
Even a man more gifted with insight and with resources in himself than
Ted had ever been, might be excused for taking refuge in the
companionship and recreations that were open to him. He was in a
foreign land with no occupation beyond amusing himself. And though this
is a position that tests the calibre of minds more strongly fortified
against the baser temptations of life, yet to one who observed Ritchie
closely at this time it would become apparent that the excesses into
which he had earlier fallen were due less to inherent weakness than to
that Nemesis power which nature often puts forth when but a small part
of man's faculties are touched by his daily life.
At this time, also, Mrs. Farningham was much engaged among the poor.
She had endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to lead Stella to resume her
interest in those she had befriended. But though she gave money
lavishly, herself she would not give. She had become conscious of some
imminent danger that threatened to engulf her. She avoided contact with
all that might arouse her. The chief aim that swayed her at this time
was to spare herself morally--to shirk those stormy depths in her nature
which threatened ever and anon to surge up and bear her she knew not
whither. But on this day Mrs. Kellwitz, struck with a sudden fear,
would listen to no excuses. 'You must come home with me,' she said
decisively. And then, when they reached the house, she sent a messenger
for Maisie, and to tell the Baroness that Mrs. Ritchie was to be her
guest for a few days to come.
During the day she talked to Stella of many things--of books and
pictures and music. Once only the girl showed a dawning interest, a
little tremor of emotion, and that was when the Italian composer's
'Sinfonische Dichtung' was named. Towards evening Mrs. Kellwitz made
her lie down to rest in her own cosy sitting-room. After a little she
fell fast asleep, and the wide dark circles round the eyes, the noble
sweep of the brow, the thin outlines of the cheeks, and the lines round
the mouth, all bore the stamp of mental languor, of pain temporarily at
bay, but not vanquished. Mrs. Kellwitz softly closed the door behind
her, and a few minutes afterwards her son Anselm came home.
He, also, was much changed. His face had, in the last few months, grown
grave and sad--almost stern in repose. Through his stepfather's intimacy
with Dr. Seemann, Anselm knew the various phases of Stella's dangerous
illness. He knew that latterly the physician was puzzled at the mental
rigidity which had fallen on her. He had often seen her at a little
distance when she walked in the Thiergarten, and had kept aloof for fear
of causing her pain while she was still weak, and also because of the
cruel perplexity which entangled their further meeting. Once, indeed,
Dustiefoot nearly betrayed him as he sat at a little distance from the
bench on which Stella rested--a book in her hand, but not reading. The
dog recognised Anselm, and rushed up to him with signs of delight which
he would never have bestowed on a stranger. He even rushed backwards
and forwards between the two in a joyous way, as if anxious to tell his
mistress that an old Lullaboolagana friend was near. But she did not
heed Dustiefoot's movements. She sat pale and motionless, with downcast
eyes, oblivious to all around her. The sight was more than Langdale
could bear. He would have laid down his life to serve her, and yet he
dared not speak to her, being in fear lest his face and the sound of his
voice would do her harm, and not good. He suffered horribly. Yet he
knew that hers was the more intolerable burden. For through all he had
work to do, and he was in constant intercourse with people whose
knowledge in some one direction exceeded his own--circumstances which
serve to make life coherent to the lover of knowledge, even when it has
lost its best savour.
To-day, when he came in, his mother observed with concern that the
fagged, strained look with which she had been struck on first seeing him
when she returned with her daughter from Dresden had deepened rather
than become less.
'You are working too hard, Anselm,' she said, looking at him keenly.
'You are as greedy as ever after knowledge. Those lectures of Virchow at
the University, and the honorary work at the hospital, and your writing,
and all the rest of it, do not make much of a holiday.'
'You forget, mother, that I had a long one----'
'Oh, in Australia! I hope you don't think of going back there. I think
there must be something insidious in the climate--something that
undermines the constitution. There is that young lady the Professor met
there and found so charming. You met her here, did you not?--Mrs.
Ritchie, you know----'
'Yes--what of her?'
'Well, I should very much like to have your opinion of her. I have made
her come here for a few days. She is sleeping just now. I am
exceedingly afraid that there is something very much amiss.'
Langdale felt a terror of what fresh catastrophe might be in store. The
fixed look in Stella's face the last time he saw her at a little
distance had haunted him night and day.
There is always a shock in hearing our worst fears put into bald,
uncompromising words. This Langdale experienced when his mother went
on:
'It is not her body now, it is her mind. I am sure of that. Perhaps
she would have more confidence in an English doctor. If you would see
her here in an informal way--she and your stepfather were so friendly,
and Amalie, too, is very fond of her. I hardly know what to think of
her husband. Amalie says he is devoted to her--but, if that is the
case, she cannot be devoted to him. There must be something very much
amiss when two young people drift so far apart at a time like this.'
Poor Langdale! Few situations could have been more ironical in a quiet,
unaggressive way than to sit listening to his mother while she calmly
discussed the situation which was the very core of the keenest sorrows
and interests in his life. So far nothing could have been gained by
taking his mother or sister into his confidence as to the relations
which had at one time existed between himself and Stella, and the
treachery that had come between them. But he was prepared at any moment
to tell them all, and to seek their help in somehow averting that
darkest of all misfortunes which seemed stealthily creeping nearer. In
the meantime he kept silence. He absented himself from home that
evening. Next morning he saw Stella alone in the library which had
witnessed their first strange meeting in the Old World.
*CHAPTER LII.*
She knew he had returned from Vienna some weeks previously, and she was
in a manner prepared to see him in his mother's house. Yet, when they
stood face to face, something akin to fear was visible in her manner.
Otherwise, he was more agitated than she was. They touched each other's
hands, and then they sat facing each other in a silence full of
ghost-like memories. Stella was the first to speak.
'You have been away, I think,' she said, without looking at him.
He told her something of his journey, of his old friend Max, and his
rising renown as an oculist. He noticed that her attention wandered,
and that she kept nervously playing with her wedding-ring, which hung
looser than ever on her finger. There was a pause.
'Yes, it must have been very interesting,' she said, looking up--a
remark that had no direct relation to what he had last said.
Something clutched at his throat and gave him a horrible, choking
sensation.
She looked into his face fixedly.
'Don't, Anselm--don't say anything. I cannot bear it. You do not know.
I can bear to speak to you now, because everything is all over and done
with. But there are times: you do not know----'
She spoke in a low, imploring voice, and then suddenly broke off.
'What do I not know, Stella?' he said, mastering himself with a violent
effort, and speaking in a calm, unmoved tone.
'Oh, it would be stupid to tell you. Let us talk of something else--the
weather, for instance.'
This little attempt at recovering something of her old gaiety smote him
to the heart.
'No, I cannot talk of anything else, Stella. I want you to speak to me
of yourself. You know, in the old days, we agreed to be friends. We
can at least be friends.'
'Yes, yes; we can be friends,' she said, and then she suddenly began to
sob.
He kept perfectly silent. When she had recovered composure, he went on
in the same calm voice as before.
'You know, Stella, friends should help one another. I think there is
something you dread. Tell me what it is. I may be able to help you.'
'Are you afraid, too?' she said quickly. He did not reply immediately.
He felt like one groping in the dark, afraid to move too quickly lest
harm should be done. Then she added hesitatingly: 'I have been afraid
for some time. The voices and the faces have gone away. But there is a
silence coming round me, and every day I am more alone--an abyss between
me and everyone that none can cross.'
'No, no, Stella; not so. How many care for you!'
'But I cannot care for them--not in the old way. There is a strange
vacancy, an apathy; it comes creeping, creeping. It is like the tide
rising round a ship that has been stranded. O my God, it is horrible--it
is horrible!' She covered her face with her hands, and as he looked at
her in tearless agony, he trembled as if in an ague fit. 'Do you know
what I keep thinking of sometimes?' she said, suddenly looking up. 'Of
some old story in Ovid, where one says: "Give me your hand before I am a
serpent all over." Those old stories where people were turned into
birds, and trees, and reptiles, they are not so terrible as--as some
other things.'
'No, they are not. Only when we see a great danger, the very fact that
we see it shows we may try to avoid it.' His voice almost failed him
once or twice, for there was something in her tone and manner, even more
than in her words, which confirmed his worst fears.
'You still keep up your old habit of taking a book with you when you go
out,' he said presently, in a lighter tone.
'Yes, but I cannot read; is it not strange?' she said, looking at him
with wide-opened eyes.
'Ah, these times come to one,' he answered. 'Now I am going to tell you
something about myself--may I?'
'Oh, of course,' she said, with more animation than she had yet shown.
'Well, I have finished that treatise I was writing at Minjah--about the
conditions of factory labour. There is some other work I want to do;
and, besides, I have gone quite blunt over the thing. The facts, and I
believe their inferences, are correct; but the style I am sure is
odious. Now, will you go over the MS. for me?'
It was some little time before she spoke, and then it was in a
hesitating, broken way, which was quite foreign to her old, quick,
spontaneous manner.
'I would be so glad to do it, but I lose things so dreadfully--things I
have been thinking of. It is as though--I hardly know how to explain
it--as if I came on blank spaces in my mind. Words and thoughts drop
away out of reach quite suddenly. I am almost afraid to speak to
people, lest I might not know what they say. I was afraid even of you.
And yet how kind you have always been--except that one letter. But it
was because it was wickedly--hurt--and the other one I never got. No, I
never got it--never.'
'But about this work I want you to do for me, Stella?' he answered. The
clear, harmonious intonations of his voice were lost in a constrained
huskiness; but though his heart was throbbing wildly with fierce and
contending emotions, his self-possession was outwardly unbroken. 'It is
very important I should get the help of some friend; and there is no one
whose aid I care to ask but yours. It does not in the least matter
about your taking a long while over it. Do only a page or two at a
time.'
'I will try to do it: but I will not let anyone see it, for fear it may
be wrong. I will try not to make mistakes; but I do not know. It is
what you were writing at Lullaboolagana?'
'Yes; and there is one thing more I am going to ask you. There is a
convalescent home for little children on the northern outskirts of the
town. My mother knows it. Will you let her take you there?'
'Oh, Anselm--no! They will be pale and miserable. They will hurt me;
and when things hurt me.... Ah, you do not know how dreadful it is!'
and a look of helpless fear came into her face, which pierced him like a
sword.
Before he could trust himself to answer this objection, she went on,
sometimes speaking in a low, hurried voice, at others very slowly, with
a curious hesitation, as if the words she sought eluded her, while often
she used terms that but approximately expressed what she meant.
'Sometimes at night I keep thinking of a poor half-crazy Welshwoman who
used to wander about, some years ago. She had a great dislike to staying
in houses. She always said there were adders in them. She was not
so--so badly hurt in her mind, you know, that she ought to be locked up.
You know, Anselm, it is true, when people lose everything--when they
forget the meaning of all around them--they are locked away like the
dead; only they are not quite like the dead. Johanna, that was her
name.... Sometimes she came to Fairacre, and mother and Kirsty were very
kind to her.'
She broke off abruptly, and gave a long shuddering sigh.
'Ah, after all, you have never been at Fairacre!' she said, fixing her
great mournful eyes on his face, after a pause. 'It was near the
vine-arcade the scarlet fairy roses grew I was to wear the day you came,
when the _Paquerette_ reached port. You always liked me to wear roses;
and when I flew up to meet you, a bird began to sing as if it were wild
with joy.... Have I hurt you?' she said falteringly, as he rose and
turned away abruptly, his lips trembling and ashy pale. He could not
speak.
She stole up to him with a frightened air, and, looking into his face,
she saw that his eyes were wet. She gave a little low moan, and put her
hand on his arm.
'Anselm, what can I say to make you glad? You were always so serene end
hopeful.... Do you remember what I said when I sent you those dreadful
letters that have been burnt into my brain?--or did I dream it? I shall
do what you think is right.... I am not dreaming now!'
He turned quickly, raising his hands to draw her to him; but with a
strong effort he resisted the impulse. He noticed that, since she began
to speak to him, something of the tension in her face had relaxed.
'Tell me about this poor woman, Stella, who used to come to Fairacre,'
he said, in as calm a voice as was possible to him.
'About Johanna? The last time she came, she was very strange. She said
that when she stayed inside speckled adders crawled round her at night,
saying, "'Drown yourself--drown yourself!' There are three under the
table now!" That was what she said, and then mother tried to soothe
her. She said if they were there, we would see them. But Johanna
laughed: it was such a sharp--no, a shrill laugh. I laughed like her
the other night, and it sounded horrible in the silence. Poor
Dustiefoot was frightened; he began to growl at my door. He lies on the
mat outside.... You are not angry with me, are you?' She looked in his
face with confused timidity.
'Ah, no, Stella; why should I be?' he said in a choked voice.
She passed her hand wearily over her eyes.
'Well, I have not finished. There is some reason why I began to tell
you. Ah, it was about poor Johanna. Yes, she laughed and said the
adders wouldn't let anyone like mother see them. They were no fools.
"Does it not say in the Word of God, 'Be ye wise as serpents'?" That
was what she said. "The way they all came staring at me!" she said.
"You see, adders have a great advantage over us in that way, ma'am,
having no eyelashes. If I prayed at all, I think I would pray that
these beasties might be kept from me." Then mother held her hand, and
said, "But you do still pray, I hope?" "Well, no, ma'am," she said,
"not lately. You see, there's some that the Lord lets off His hands
altogether. If they pray, He turns a deaf ear to them; if they are in
want or sickness, He gives them no wine or mead out of a crystal cup."
... She did drown herself at last,' she ended, in an awe-stricken tone,
looking into Anselm's face with startled, wide-opened eyes.
'Yes, but about the convalescent children?' he said gently.
'Oh, I know now why I told you about this poor woman,' she answered
quickly. 'I am terrified of being hurt, because when I am, as I was so
badly with the music at the Philharmonic Hall, I--I think it would be
better--oh, so much better--to be quite at rest. Some days ago I walked
by the canal----' She suddenly stopped, a half-guilty look in her face.
'You have been awake very much of late, Stella,' he said, betraying no
sign of anguish, save in the constrained accents of his voice.
'Yes; but that is better than to be made to sleep. Often when I am
asleep, everything I touch falls in atoms--everything crumbles away.
Then I dream something dreadful has happened, and I am glad to wake.
But when I am wide awake, it is worse--oh, much worse--than any dream!'
'But, Stella, these children are not miserable and wretched. It is not
a great hospital; there are never more than fourteen. It is a private
place, founded by seven ladies--my mother is one of them--for children
who have all but recovered from illness. The greatest joy you could
give them would be to tell them a little Australian story, or take them
out for a drive in the country two or three at a time. My mother and I
took four of them up to Treptow the other day. It is on the river, and
there is a large coffee-room quite close to the Spree. They sat by the
window eating cakes and seeing the boats and barges sail by, and then we
went out into the wood behind Treptow, and every little weed they saw
gave them joy. You have plenty of time.'
'Plenty of time,' she repeated vacantly, and then a little afterwards,
as if the meaning of the words had gradually dawned on her, 'There is
endless time--and it is all empty and terrible, and full of crumbling
things. I like to go outside because I feel as if I were then away from
the corridor--the dreadful corridor. You do not know what I mean by
that.'
'No; but you can explain it to me, Stella.'
His calm, even voice seemed to allay her rising agitation. She passed
her hand slowly over her brow before answering.
'You know, for weeks back when I try to read, or write, or even
sew--whatever it is I try to do slips away from me; even when people
talk round me their voices go a long way off. And then I am in a wide,
great, empty corridor, where my footsteps make a strange sound. But I
do not mind that. It is the long, dark passages that wind out of it. I
feel as if I were dragged along them against my will, and at the end
there are great cages with iron bars in front, strong iron bars, for
there are wild creatures behind them.'
She looked up into his face with a terror in her eyes that made the
perspiration stand out in cold drops on his forehead.
'Dear Stella, do not think of them,' he said in a low, imploring voice.
'Ah, but you do not know--they are not savage creatures out of the
woods. They are human beings--they are women, some of them; but they
beat at the bars and shriek to get out. When I hear them I feel as if I
must shriek too. They are mad--they must be kept there because they are
more dangerous than wild beasts. Ah, my God! how they terrify me! I
keep silent. I say nothing of all this, because people would be afraid
of me as I am of these cages, and--and those that are in them.'
'No, no, Stella. That is only how people feel after they have had a
terrible illness like yours. To-morrow you must come to see these
children----'
'Ah, the children. They have been ill. You are nursing them back to
life again--how cruel that is often! They might have died while the
world seemed still beautiful, and they could pray to God, "Our Father,
who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." Think what it is, Anselm, to
outlive all that--to know that there is no Father in heaven--that there
are people who must be put into iron cages--that you see it coming
nearer every day--a terror you cannot name!'
'Stella, Stella, think how wrong it would be to let ourselves sink under
one idea--one aspect of life in that way! It is only because your
illness still hangs about you that you can have such strange thoughts.
If these children were neglected now, when their parents are unable to
care for them properly, their constitutions might be injured--impaired
for life. It is not that they would die--for most creatures, having
once gained a footing in the world, make up their minds to stay if
possible. It is that the seeds would be laid for lingering
maladies--perhaps for madness itself. That is what you can do,
Stella--help to save some people from the wretchedness of lives
hopelessly mutilated by disease. I know there are some forms of misery
we can do nothing to lessen. It is all the more shame to us if we do
not help in things within our reach.'
There was a little touch of sternness in his voice. It hurt him to
assume it, but the tone seemed to bring his words home to her more
directly.
'You wish me to go to see them? Ah, you think I can speak to them--that
they will love me as the children used to----'
'I do not think it--I know it. Once you told me that you were wilful.
I did not quite believe it then, but now you are, a little--only you
will not persist. Now let me tell you about some of these little ones.'
He made her sit in a large armchair, and placed a cushion under her
head, and then sat on a low chair facing her, and told her one or two of
those commonplace, everyday incidents in the annals of the poor which
come within the ken of all who visit or work among them.