swallowing up this intoxicating recaptured happiness? If so, she
spurned the thought--cast it aside like one of those malformed little
insects that sometimes crawl on the petals of blood-red roses. She was
glad that a kind of pagan recklessness, of indifference to far-off
consequences, mingled with the tide of her courage and reviving
happiness. Once for all she had decided that the problem of her life
must be looked at as it was in itself--must be solved apart from
authority and tradition. She had been too long cowering like a slave,
afraid of others--afraid of herself--afraid most of all of Nature, which
in its subtle way had all the time cherished and nursed back into being
the one love of her life, compared to which all other bonds were but as
flax touched with flame. The chalice of life's most precious
benediction was once more at her lips.
She recalled something that Langdale had once said of the stimulating
aura of London--the indefinable demand on one's best powers to polish
the rude rocks of capacity into blocks fit for building. But apart from
any subtle appeal to the mind, there was a kind of implied union, in the
silent fellowship of being successfully alive, which she shared with the
crowd around. To be young and well clad, and walk upright with
well-moulded limbs, with eyes undimmed with fears, with a capacity for
happiness, was a form of responsive loyalty to the life that surged
around. Everything appeared to her so unworn and fresh, she was alive in
every faculty, and stirred as with the tender novelty in which objects
present themselves to us in early childhood. Fancy, imagination, and
memory, all were buoyant as young birds that had newly learned to cleave
the air.
The feeling now and then was uppermost that she had in some way gone
back to an earlier stage of experience--that some indefinable weight had
slipped off her. It was as though Nature had taken her by the hand and
led her back smilingly from the sophistry of long-accumulated
tradition--led her back to the primal instincts of life, blotting out
the officious 'thou shalt' and 'shalt not' of defunct generations as
impertinent intermeddling with a joy all her own. Perhaps there are
forces slumbering in the mind which waken into activity but for one
brief hour of the years which are given to us here. It may be that on
this morning, if never again, Stella was subtly influenced by the bare,
untrammelled aspects of her native land--by the vast unpeopled spaces
which hold no claim from the past, and lay no ghostly charges on human
beings to postpone their lives for the sake of those who have been and
those who are to come. And yet it was vagrant recollections of one of
the wildernesses of her country that first quelled the glad ardour of
her mood. In the midst of her content at being among crowds of unknown
men and women, she recalled how often people spoke of the solitude of a
strange city being more absolute than that of a desert. Instantaneously
she saw before her an austere stretch of Mallee Scrub. What moody
melancholy the reality would evoke--what troops of questions! ...
Questions of what? A quick, inexplicable pang shot through her mind--a
dread like that which comes in a dream of the night, when one who has
long ago passed beyond reach and recall stands in the masking appearance
of life, and the sleeper shrinks from the blank of awakening. But it
was a momentary feeling.
She made her purchases, and then passed out of Oxford Street by way of
Audley Street, purposely taking a circuitous route to the Westham Hotel.
She wanted to walk alone--to give herself up to the full sway of this
swift, strong return of mental and physical well-being. But like the
refrain of a song which once heard long ago comes back to haunt us one
day, we know not why, the thought of the great Mallee desert kept rising
up before her: the days she had wandered there--the books she had
read--the thoughts that had come to her of the people who had fled from
the world and lived in desolate places for the salvation of their soul.
What strange delusions men had put upon themselves from age to age,
sacrificing the only life they were sure of to vague chimeras of unknown
modes of existence! Then her mother's grave, sweet voice came to her,
and she suddenly found the tears rising in her eyes. She wiped them
half angrily.
'I must write and tell mother all--all!' she thought.
But the resolve did not quiet the throng of thoughts which began to
rise. 'My beloved child, how I long to see you once more! Give me
fuller details of your daily life. Why do you say so little of Edward?
He wrote with such faithful regularity when you were ill; but since your
recovery he writes no longer.' These and other extracts from the home
letters, from her mother's especially, rose before her. Nay, it seemed
as though one strode beside her to read them to her whether she would or
no. She went over the past few months again in self-vindication, as if
she were pleading her case before an unseen tribunal.
'See,' she seemed to say, as if addressing a judge, 'how hopelessly all
my future would have been wrecked if Anselm had not saved me from
myself. It was not one misfortune that overwhelmed me. Had it been
only that vile plot of an unscrupulous woman--cheating me out of the one
great happiness of life--I would have somehow borne the misery, perhaps
overcome it. At least the union would be binding. That I am sure of.
But there was a worse betrayal--the moral failure of the man who married
me, concealing his subjection to drink. Yes, one may overcome this for
a time, but there is always the possibility of a relapse. A year of
probation--of what value is that when in one hour all the forces of
habit may resume full sway?'
It seemed as though her invisible audience looked at her with stern,
searching eyes. The very air became heavy with doubt and suspicion.
'We have made no plans,' she went on, unconsciously entering on the
defence that implies accusation. 'We have in common the power of
sympathy with wide aims--with impersonal endeavours. We are capable of
a great disinterested friendship that time and intimacy can only render
more perfect....'
What a strange power of the mind this is--in the hour of keenest elation
to become conscious of a cloud of unseen witnesses who are satisfied
with no version of our motives short of absolute veracity. After all
that she could urge, Stella was in the end shaken, dissatisfied,
restless. 'It is part of the morbid phase through which I have been
passing,' she thought. And she mechanically hurried on, as if to escape
her self-appointed tribunal, her explanations, the doubts that were
incipient fears.
She had followed Audley Street much further than she intended, and now
struck out of it eastward, going into a narrow street where, in the
distance, she saw one or two cabs. She had got tired, and wished to
drive back to the Westham. Before she reached them she was startled by
a sudden downpour of rain. At the same moment she found herself
opposite the open porch of a church, into which she went for shelter.
There were some women who had evidently come out. Two of them were
talking together.
'Which cardinal?' said one.
'Why, Cardinal Newman,' answered the other.
The name reached Stella, awakening many slumbering memories--awakening,
too, that deep chord of reverent affection which the soul never loses
for those who have at one time illuminated and guided it, even though we
may have lost the light, though we may have strayed far from the
pastures in which still waters flow.
'Is the Cardinal here?' she asked eagerly.
'Yes--the service is almost over,' answered the woman she addressed;
'but if you go in, and go up near the altar, you can see him very well,'
she added kindly.
Acting on the impulse of the moment, Stella went in. But even as she
entered some curious intuition crossed her mind--a misgiving, rather,
that this simple action might break the purpose round which her
happiness, her late triumphant sense of restored well-being, had
centred. She passed noiselessly up the left aisle and took a seat not
far from the high altar, where she was partly concealed by a pillar.
Yes, the service was almost over; but she saw him clearly--the man whose
words so many years ago, in her careless, untroubled girlhood, had so
deeply stirred the depths of her inner life; whose voice had been as a
voice from heaven to guide her into close communion with God. But the
voice had died into silence, and all the glow of dawning intercourse
with a kingdom not of this world--all the glad fervour of faith--had
left her. And often it had seemed good to her that she had been so
early emancipated from the dogmatic finalities, the uncertain
certainties, full of contradictions, that men are asked to receive as
revelations of the Divine Will. But now that the first spring of youth
was barely over, how hard and cruel life had become! and what was the
bourne to which she had turned?
Alas! had she so soon again fallen into the clutches of Care and
Fear--those haggard visitants, never far off when the conscience is not
at peace, but soothed with anodynes? From the moment that she knelt
within the church, all that had blinded her was swept ruthlessly away.
It was like the letting in of waters, whose rising tide obliterates the
paltry landmarks hastily thrown up by invading scouts who had no legal
claim to the country. She heard nothing--saw nothing but that pale,
spiritual presence; the high, noble brow--the austere, ascetic
countenance, furrowed with years and sorrows--a face keenly symbolical
of a life consecrated to the service of God and man.
She saw his hands joined and held up in benediction--saw him turn to the
people and make the sign of the cross on them; and she bent her head in
bitter weeping, like a reed shaken by a great storm. As smoke vanisheth
away and is seen no more, so was she forsaken of the happiness--the
passionate elation--that had so lately thrilled her through and through
with an exalted sense of vitality.
Low and lower yet her head was bent, while she was rent with piercing
sorrow, and the tears drenched her face like rain. The last note of the
organ died away, the last footfalls of the congregation retreated, and
she was alone in the house of prayer--alone with the still, small voice
at whose sound our dearest travesties of righteousness shrivel into
filthy rags. She had wandered so long and so far, and near her was the
image of the crucified One--whom she had betrayed like Peter of old.
'And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.... And Peter went out and
wept bitterly.'
All the unsatisfied yearning for belief, which had so long been stilled
and left a waste place in her heart, rose into new life. And with this
the anguish of a penitent convicted of innumerable treasons pierced her
like a sword.
There are experiences of the soul that cannot be fathomed. They are
beyond the reach of any plummet that is within our grasp--being part of
the inscrutable mystery of the union of matter and spirit. There are
moments in which the bruised, shaken, sorrowful human creature sees as
by lightning-flashes the wild devious ways by which the spirit is lured
away from the only possession that is everlasting! In the revulsion of
feeling that overwhelmed her, Stella could for a time frame neither
words nor purpose. But from the first she knew that she dared not
follow the path which so short a time before had been to her as the only
one that led into the citadel of life and hope. Gradually the first
bitterness and tumult ebbed away. Some lines that &he had once read to
her father came back to her:
'But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild,
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied, My Lord!'
Yes, out of the abysses of exceeding darkness which first fell on her
when she knew that the only purpose which seemed to make life possible
must be abandoned, there gradually emerged a faint dawn of hope. After
all her weary wanderings--after her blindness and hardness of
heart--after her long conviction that God could only be darkly groped
after, never securely hoped in--she knew once more that the chastisement
of our peace was upon Him.
'And I replied, My Lord!'
She whispered the words through her blinding tears, and even her great
unhappiness was an earnest to her that, notwithstanding her desertion
and denial, and callous forgetfulness and unbelief, she had not been
cast off utterly.
More and more piercingly she realized how her own pride and vanity and
impatience of suffering had been at the root of the evil that had
overtaken her. A scorching sense of shame at her infidelity to the
higher loyalties of justice, self-sacrifice, and generosity overcame
her. Waves of cutting remorse swept over her as she reviewed her
conduct in her relationship with her husband. How indifferent and hard
she had been all these months--shirking all companionship with him,
never seeking to win him to any interest or pursuit beyond the narrow
groove in which his life had always run! She was, perhaps, a little
unfair to herself as she reviewed her conduct in this respect, as we are
apt to be in our self-condemnations as well as in our
self-enthusiasms--both in reality being often grounded on ignorance.
There are periods in people's lives when everything is against
them--when the currents that might have floated them into a quiet haven
conspire only to dash them against the rocks. But yet the truth was
clear--that on the first evidence of the power of evil habit over her
husband she had stood coldly aloof, as if wrong-doing on his part
absolved her from all lot or concern in his fate. She recalled how, in
speaking of him, she had even inferred that he could not help
himself--assuming that the spirit of man, no more than his body, can
have any source of impulse or action apart from the inexorable links of
material causes. Could the spirit of evil itself help to wreck men with
a darker atheism than this? ... 'He had so keen an appreciation of what
was good in people--quick to perceive how men's failings and vices are
often a forced rather than a wilful product. Always he expected them to
live down the evil--to hold to and cultivate the better side of their
nature.'
Where had she read or heard the words? Was not this, indeed, the very
core of moral influence? And then came back to her the words of one of
the Fathers to one who had tried to take his life: 'Thy crime has made
thee mine. See that henceforth thou walkest worthily of me and of God,
to whom thou belongest.' The belief that evil may be overcome--this
spring of moral hopefulness--how basely she had denied it by word and
action! What had become of the early Church when so much of its
endeavours lay among those enslaved, and the descendants of those
enslaved by the darkest forms of sensuality, if the half-understood
dicta of pseudo-science regarding heredity, and the insignificance of
man's will, had prevailed rather than the Divine rule, 'Believe, and
thou shalt be saved'? Oh, how cruelly she had failed in that care for
the better nature of the man to whom she had promised her whole life!
how completely she had fallen away from that lofty devotion to duty
which is the truest, clearest note of womanhood!
And looking steadily into the depths of her unacknowledged thoughts,
into the dark recesses of her mind, she convicted herself of having
relied on Ritchie's inability to overcome his besetting sin--of having
rested on this as a justification of her own future actions.
When the soul is penetrated with a deep sense of guilt, and is
prostrated in utter humiliation, no thought overcomes it with such
bleeding penitence as this--that it has failed another in the day of
need.... She was consumed with shame and sorrow, and yet she was
quickened by the thought that here her downward course had been arrested
by the presence of that priest of the Most High whose words had so early
fastened on her heart. Once more she had been drawn as with
irresistible cords to the foot of the Cross.
*CHAPTER LV.*
After Stella had fought down the first amazed opposition to her changed
plans, a sort of wonder came over her that she should thus throw aside
all that seemed like the substance of living for an impalpable
shadow--nay, for dark possibilities that began to lower more darkly at
her the more she strove to face the future with deliberate calmness. But
she did not falter in her purpose, and gradually the powers which man in
all ages has found in work and prayer came to her aid. After she had
seen Langdale and bidden him farewell, the worst was over. He returned
to London three days before Mrs. Farningham sailed. When Stella saw him
in his sister's sitting-room, he had already learned of the change of
plans.
'You must come with me, Anselm, now that Mrs. Ritchie has decided to
remain. She seems to lose her interest in things mysteriously. She
does nothing now but visit rookeries at the East-End. I mean, you must
sail in the same boat with me.'
Presently Stella came in.
'You are not so well again,' he said quickly, noticing at once the
entire change in her aspect since he had last seen her.
'Oh, I am only a little tired,' she answered, but her face had grown
still paler. An old friend of her mother's called, and Mrs. Farningham
went with her into the nursery.
'Amalie tells me you are not going with her to the East,' Langdale said
when they were alone.
'No--and I wanted to tell you personally, and to say farewell.'
'Farewell?' he repeated. He walked hastily to one of the windows; then
he came back, and stood by the mantel-piece a little way from where she
sat. 'Stella, do not be afraid,' he said, in an agitated voice. 'I
shall never say a word, nor urge a claim to your attention, beyond what
you judge would be right. You have been so much better; but even in
this short time you have lost ground.'
'In my weakness, my selfishness, my forgetfulness of duty, you have been
so good to me. You must let me say this before we part,' she said
hurriedly, and as if she had not heard what he said.
'So good to you?' he echoed, as if the words hurt him, and then he
checked himself. 'Stella, do not try your nature beyond what it can
bear. Go with my sister as you purposed doing. I will not see you, nor
even write to you. Gain complete strength of mind and body, and then
decide what you ought to do. Stella, you may trust me. And if you do
not go to the East, let me write to Madonna. It is not fit that you
should be left so much alone; you are not as strong as you think. I
have written a long letter to Hector, which I delayed sending till you
were well enough to read it.'
'We must not send it. We have so far overlived our sorrow without
paining others.... And now the worst is over.'
There was a little break in her voice as she said the last words. She
was outwardly calm, but the anguish at her heart made the words seem
unreal even to herself. Langdale looked at her fixedly, and was about
to speak, but he checked himself, and again leant against the
mantelpiece, shading his eyes with one hand. There was a long pause,
and then Stella spoke again:
'Do not fear for me, Anselm. Hitherto I have been thinking chiefly of
myself--blaming others for the unhappiness that has overtaken us;
brooding over mistakes instead of seeking to set them right. I will no
longer think of myself--it is a melancholy subject.'
Her smile was sad, but her face had in it more of the old alertness, the
being alive to the curiously unadjusted qualities and defects of life,
than she had shown since their first painful meeting in the Old World.
Then she told him what had led to her sudden change of plans. As she
did so, something of her old vigour and ardour of expression came back.
But in all mental conflicts there are so many forces at work which we
but dimly apprehend. We can but say that we have been defeated, or
gained a victory, which leaves us more humiliated, more mistrustful of
our hearts than ever before. The process we cannot fully explain to
ourselves, much less to others.
'You feel just now,' he said slowly, when she had ceased speaking, 'that
you should sacrifice all your individuality, all your life, in
reparation for a fancied wrong. But can you endure the punishment? Do
you realize the peril----'
'No; not punishment!' she said, eagerly interrupting him. 'It is
punishment when we are allowed to follow our own devices; when we are
dead to endeavour, to patience, to hope--hope, the beautiful spirit that
leads us on, white and serene and gentle as the angel of the dew, and
bids us never despair of overcoming our own follies, of helping others
to better effort and aspiration. I have been so long the unresisting
victim of despair; but once more God has called me. Do not pity me,
Anselm! Be sorry for me only in the time when I was insensible to
duty--deafened with the noise of the chain of mortality so that I could
hear none of the voices by which God calls us. Oh! it is true; He does
call us, and when we hear Him the poison is drawn out of our darkest
sorrows. Dear friend, how can I explain myself? To-day all the
sharpest pangs that I have suffered, all that I must endure, seem to me
a proof of the love of God. I see that if I had been happy in the way I
had chosen, it would mean that He had utterly forgotten me--left me to
myself; and when that happens, it is not only ourselves we hurt; we
spoil the lives of others.'
'Do not let us deceive ourselves,' he answered, in a voice which,
despite his self-control, vibrated with keen anguish. 'We have been
robbed and cheated! In our final separation we lose the best
possibilities that life can offer. I can only submit. But I cannot
pretend to see in this chaos of duplicity any glimmering of Divine
guidance. At last it is brought home to me that life may become so poor
and maimed a thing that it is not greatly worth having.'
'Oh, do not say that,' she cried, looking into his face imploringly. 'I
know that in all the years to come there will be moments of anguished
recollection. Twilight or the rose of dawn, a strain of music, a chance
picture, the glow of sunset, a bud opening in spring, the song of a
bird, any sight or sound that searches the depths of our nature--we know
not why--all the things that touch us most may be charged with a burden
of sadness--a sense of loss, a pain whose edge can never be entirely
blunted. But the pain, and the loss, and the unconquerable yearning,
let us take them by the hand, and make them the companions of our wiser
hours. In seeking after the best that we can reach, each cup of
suffering, every pang of sorrow, may breathe into our lives that finer
spirit of all knowledge.'
'Ah, Stella, Stella! must I lose you? hear your voice no more? What can
comfort me for this?' he said, looking at her with dimmed eyes. He
turned away abruptly, and paced up and down the room. Then he came back
to where she stood and resumed in a calmer voice: 'And to make the loss
more intolerable there is the fact that our happiness was wrecked by the
miserable intrigue of that wretched woman.... There are creatures so
low down in the scale of nature that the whole nervous system consists
of a slender cord, that has a little bulge by way of a brain near the
mouth. That is about the type, morally, of a being who could act as she
did. And yet she is to go unpunished--screened even from any sense of
shame! But no; I shall yet in some way expose her!' said Langdale, with
flashing eyes. It was not only the irreparable mischief to both their
lives that made Mrs. Tareling's immunity from all penalty so intolerable
to him, but also the recoil against injustice which, as a rule, moves a
man more keenly than a woman. 'Let us admit,' he said in a lower tone,
'that we have been betrayed--but as for consolation----'
'Yes; betrayed by me!' answered Stella in a low voice. Langdale made a
gesture of denial; but Stella put her hand on his arm, and, standing
close beside him, repeated: 'Yes; it is true. In the end no one can
betray us but ourselves. If, instead of being governed by wounded pride
and fierce jealousy, I had resigned myself----'
'That is, if you had been some other human being instead of yourself.
Stella, this is unreasonable!'
'And then,' she went on, speaking with some difficulty, 'it would be
wrong for me not to tell you that in the first bitterness of our meeting
I now feel I spoke in a way that reflected unduly on my husband.'
It was the first time she had spoken the word in his hearing, and as he
heard it, Langdale coloured deeply.