not try to urge you to any line of action merely in my own interests. I
have been content to drift in this. I have formed plans and given them
up. The chief thing was that you should first recover. You had in a
measure done so when this ardour for nullifying your life seized you.
But beware of doing your own inner nature and instincts a great
violence.... You were imposed upon and feloniously betrayed. Granted
that you should not under any circumstances have been cheated into such
a marriage, still, there are certain forms of temptation to which every
nature will succumb under given circumstances. But is it right to
attempt fidelity to a bond that may eventually wreck your life? Anyone
may be hurried into wrong-doing--betrayed into an unmoral course of
life--but the fatal thing is the not repenting, or foisting
ecclesiastical perversions upon the conscience. Morals have been
evolved to save, not to crush us--not to make it impossible for us to
work out the salvation of our better natures. Of course, I do not use
the word in its priestly sense.'
'You are afraid for me,' she answered in a faltering voice; 'but believe
me, weak and unstable as I have before been, I know now that I am no
longer blinded. I am not afraid of you, Anselm. I am afraid of myself.
If I went now with your sister.... Ah, you have understood what it
meant.... We both know the tyrannical limitations of life. And then,
do what we would--nothing could give us back the past--nothing.'
Her voice failed her, and there was silence for a little time.
'I must abide by your decision,' he said in a low voice.
Many thoughts had crowded into her mind that threatened to sweep away
her composure. But the necessity of saying something of all she owed to
him nerved her.
'Will it comfort you at all to know that you have been in truth my best
friend? In the days of my utmost weakness and despair you led me back
from the brink of insanity.... You were entirely forgetful of self, kind
with the delicate kindness of a chivalrous nature--you must hear me.
You helped me day by day, and yet kept out of my way. You knew you had
only to speak in those dark days, and I would have gone with you gladly
to the ends of the earth. No tie, no consideration, would have held me;
you saved me from worse than death.... After all that had happened, you
might well have considered that my life was yours.... It is so much the
creed of the world that a man's strength does not consist in
forbearance--in tender consideration of a woman's weakness.... Oh my
friend, my friend, can you ever know from what an abyss you saved me? A
man's life is so much more twofold than a woman's. He has his work and
his place to fill in the world. She has the large leisure of home; and
if at her side the phantom comes of broken vows and duties trampled
under foot, the spring of her life is poisoned at the source. If our
lives were given only for such happiness as we could clutch----'
He was deeply touched by the pathetic intensity of her voice--touched,
too, by the truth of what she said. He knew how the world is strewn
with the wrecks of anarchy in conduct. He was too close an observer of
human affairs not to know that the wider and deeper a woman's nature is,
the more surely does it suffer under the consciousness of having, in any
crisis of life, chosen what was pleasant rather than what was right.
And though he held that it would be as irrational to place all who
repudiate the bond of marriage on the same level as it would be to
condemn the legal tie because of its many and bitter failures, yet, in
his calmer, more detached thoughts, all his experience of things as they
are led him to shrink from the shadow of blame on the one woman who had
exalted and widened his ideal of her sex. And yet, how well he knew that
an open rupture, not only with the conventional decorums of society, but
with a great law, is infinitely more healthful for a finely-tempered,
sensitive nature than the slow moral corrosion of enforced companionship
with a hopelessly inferior mind! It was, under the circumstances,
inevitable that he should think much worse of Ritchie than he deserved.
But he began to perceive that in the awakening of the strong religious
instinct of her nature Stella might find an antidote against the more
subtle evils of her lot. Only, all his training, as well as his
inherited instincts on the question, led him to mistrust the variability
of the devotional temperament. Could this impetus last?--or would it
turn into a broken reed to wound her more incurably than ever before?
Even in the midst of the dull, deep pain, the sense of an all-embracing
catastrophe, the utter vacuity that for the time swallowed all which
before had been of deep interest to him, this question rose up--forced
itself on him.
'This strong influence that has suddenly taken hold of you, Stella--are
you sure it is something more than a phantasm that----'
'I am glad you have asked this,' she answered quickly. 'There are some
things we cannot well speak of unless we are sure of sympathy. The day
after I had been in the church I went again, early in the morning. I
felt smitten to the very soul--robbed of all the joy and pride of life.
But the moment I looked upon that pale figure nailed on the cross, and
knelt, not to pray, but simply to cry like a broken-hearted child who
has wandered far, far from its father's house, and comes back too tired
and frightened to do more than creep into a corner--then I knew that
though I may never be an orthodox Catholic, yet the old faith had so far
revived as to be an inspiring rule of life, to give a vivifying motive
to every exertion. You know, there are some things, after all, that we
can be quite sure of. We know, Anselm, you and I, that though our lives
are to be widely sundered----'
Langdale gave a great sigh, which was almost a groan. At the sound
Stella's face flushed faintly, and with an evident effort at composure
she went on:
'Yet the day can never come in which we shall be indifferent to each
other. And in the same way we may know, with a conviction beyond
dispute, that behind all the confusion and mystery of life there runs a
great sane purpose with which we may join our wills and lives. In the
end the most we can hope to do must be limited to a small patch of the
world, and as far as our personal influence can reach. To spoil that
for the sake of any happiness---- You know the rough and ready
classifications of the world----'
'I apprehend your meaning, Stella.... Certainly, if our lives were
given us chiefly for happiness, our parting to-day would be a crime.
Perhaps it is not so.'
'In very truth it is not so,' returned Stella, a glow lighting up her
whole face as she looked steadfastly at her friend.
'And then, when you come out of the church--when you are in actual
contact with the depths of human misery in this vast city--do you find
any clue that satisfies your conscience and reason why a world, supposed
to be under the loving rule of an omnipotent Creator, should present so
strange a spectacle?'
'In the last three days,' she answered slowly, 'I have been a good deal
with some people who are working among the poorest and some of the most
depraved in the East-End. Ah, my God, what pictures have burnt
themselves into my memory!--what ineffaceable ones of the faces of young
girls that still keep something of the dewy innocence of childhood, and
yet are engulfed in living death! Women unsexed, men without manhood,
youth without purity, childhood that has never known the sanctity of
home--yes, always where there are alleys reeking with bad air, are
courts full of filth, where there are men sodden with drink and women in
shameless rags, there, everywhere, are children in swarms. Two nights
ago I could not sleep. They passed before me in endless processions,
those maimed, ruined existences, fit only to be huddled out of sight--to
be imprisoned like lepers, so as to stamp out the contagion. At last I
could bear it no longer. I rose up in the darkness, and fell on my
knees. But I could not pray. "O God, dost Thou not care at all?"--that
was all I could say over and over, with a stupid, blank amazement. And
then, all at once--how can I tell you?...'
The tears forced themselves into her eyes. She was very pale, and her
lips were quivering. Yet all the time her face was lit with that grave
spiritual light which irradiates the countenance when the heart is
quickened with impersonal zeal and thought.
'Try and tell me--I want to know,' said Langdale in a low voice. His
eyes were dim with feelings too poignant to be borne with clear
sight--too deep to be relieved by words.
'I _knew_ that this, even this wild, cruel anarchy, was not born of
chaos. It was the shadow side of the highest possibilities of our
nature. Because we have power to aspire to communion with God, so human
beings have the power to fall and be submerged in the black eddies of
shame and pollution. This was the embodiment of that principle of evil
which everyone who turns away from the pitiful egoism of self-seeking
must strive against--must fight to subdue.
'Then I saw that other great army of which you have often spoken to
me--the men and women sown broadcast over the whole land, who, amid all
the moral deformity of life, neither flee from the world nor are sick of
it, nor despair of the capacity of our common nature for those things
which are good and true and of lovely report. I saw them: women of
lonely lives--often undistinguished, unknown--yet firm in the constancy
of principle, touched with the gentleness of unweariable love; men of
all grades, enfranchised from the corrupt propensities that make our
race the willing slaves of evil, steadily, constantly working for the
moral renovation of their country--each doing a little, each helping to
stem the tide of human misery. Here, a pure-hearted, delicate girl,
giving time and thought to hours of intercourse with rough factory lads
and girls--wakening in a heart here and there the better impulses that
lie dormant, often only because no care nor gentleness has breathed on
the timid seeds and wooed them into life.... Yes, even the little I have
seen helped me to estimate how true was what you once said, that almost
all who have any by-play of time and means take thought for some of
those less fortunately placed. To touch one or two minds to finer
issues--to rescue one or two lives from the appalling depths ready to
swamp them--this is not a very bold or ambitious object; and yet to set
it before ourselves, we must be sure that no siren voice has deluded us
into making the life of any fellow-creature more open to the temptations
which beset him, more callous to belief in the goodness of others.
Anselm, when these thoughts swept over me, my heart throbbed with
gratitude to you--with pride in your unselfish goodness. It was to you
I owed it that the Nessus robe of passion had not scorched and laid
waste my life.'
He was too much moved to trust himself to speak for a little time. At
last he said slowly:
'I do not think that I will now go to the East.... May we not return to
the old footing of friends? ... Let me see you from time to time as long
as you are in London....'
There was a pleading tone in his voice to which every fibre of her
nature responded. But her victory over herself was too hardly won, too
insecure, too bitterly steeped in the struggles that seem to exhaust the
very founts of action and resolve. She felt too keenly how impossible
the tranquillity of friendship would be for them both for some time to
come.
'I think you should go with Amalie--she is very anxious about the boy.
I want you to go.... And then,' she added, not meeting his eyes while
she said it, 'perhaps in the time to come we may both find that a new
plan of life opened to us after this parting.'
'If you wish it very much, I will go for your sake,' he answered.
Then she stood up to bid him farewell.
'There is one question, Stella; will you let me ask it? You are
satisfied that Ritchie knew nothing of the perfidy practised by his
sister?'
'Quite--quite! He is incapable of so mean an action--least of all
against me.'
She raised her head proudly, and the look on her face cut him to the
soul, and yet consoled him. Let those who have solved the
contradictions of our inscrutably involved nature explain the enigma.
There was silence between them for a few moments. Then he took both her
hands in his. Each looked for a little into the other's face, and they
parted. A few moments after Langdale left the hotel he was hailed by an
old friend--a physician--who insisted on carrying him off to St. James's
Hospital, to see a man who mysteriously kept on living, while every
principle known to medical science clearly proved that he should have
died three days previously. Stella, in the meantime, was lying prone in
a darkened room, lost to all thought or sensation, except the
consciousness that her life had in very truth passed from her. But
after a time she remembered that she had promised Ted to accompany him
that evening to see Irvine's 'Macbeth,' and she knew how infinitely
disappointed he would be if she failed to keep the appointment. She
therefore rose and summoned Maisie to dress her.
We are aided by the limitations of life, as well as by its rarer hours
of illuminating insight. Habit, Routine, Custom--these three gray
sisters, who in the liquid dew of youth fill us with languor, with
impatient scorn and rebellion--how softly and securely they lead us by
the hand when the wine-red roses of passion are overblown and trampled
under foot!
*CHAPTER LVI.*
Three days later Langdale sailed for the East, in company with his
sister.
'It beats me hollow, Stella, to imagine why you didn't go with them,'
said Ritchie that evening, in a tone of wondering expostulation. Like
all solidly practical people, he disliked treating fixed arrangements as
airy outlines of things not to be done. And the thought weighed on him
still more, that Stella would now be so much alone, while he and
Farningham were 'gallivanting about,' as he phrased it, from one
racecourse to another. The thought of those endless, horsey, excited
crowds, began to weary him in advance. And then Stella's new plan of
going so often to church, and so much among the poor, gave Ted a
melancholy conviction that she must be 'feeling very low.' He had of
late noticed that look again on Stella's face that his acquaintance on
board the _Hindoo Fawn_ had, in ignorance of their relationship,
described as being that of a sleep-walker, or a person who had seen a
ghost. Only along with this there was not that shrinking avoidance of
his society which had so deeply wounded him for some time before her
change of plans. She did not reply to his observation, but took up a
letter that lay on a table near her, glanced over it, and then looked up
at him, as if about to speak.
Stella had fully decided that Ritchie must ultimately know all. The
past would be too full of ghostly memories, too deeply riddled with
secret depths, to make their joint lives tolerable, if he were kept in
ignorance of the events that had brought her to death's door, and had so
much widened the distance between them during the past dark months. In
the last heart-searching, self-reproachful days, she had seen how
culpable she had been in the old days, in the careless, irresponsible
way in which she had accepted Ted's homage for so many years. She
realized that if her own happiness had been secured, as Langdale's wife,
Ted's life would have been wrecked.
'Even as it is----' she thought, with a sinking heart.
And yet the more she strove to see things clearly and dispassionately,
the more convinced she was that his weakness in the past had nothing of
that moral cretinism which makes the hope of a permanently restored
power of will a fond delusion.
'Who shall find a valiant woman? ... The heart of her husband trusteth
in her.... She will render him good, and not evil, all the days of her
life.' ... Yes, this must be her aim; and as the days went on, and the
passionate sorrow that had consumed her lost its poignancy, she would
learn to acknowledge--nay, to feel--that even if she could, she would
not have their marriage undone, at the cost of Ted's misery and probable
degradation.
'You married because Laurette behaved worse than a thief and a liar; and
now, Stella, you are broken-hearted.'
She knew so well the direct, uncompromising terms into which Ted would
put the situation.
'No, Ted, I am not broken-hearted, and I would not if I could go back on
our marriage.' On the day that she could say this with truth she would
tell him all. Such had been her resolve. But on the evening of this
day, when life seemed to be merged into a listless mechanical round,
when all the better possibilities of aspiration, and close sympathy, and
personal joy seemed to have swept by like a vessel in mid-ocean, while
she crouched like a forlorn castaway on a desolate island, watching the
last sunrays fall on the gallant barque that would soon be lost to
sight, she told herself that such a purpose was idle.
'I can't flatter myself,' went on Ted after a pause, 'that it is on my
account you gave Mrs. Farningham the slip almost at the last moment.'
He did not speak in an aggrieved tone, but rather with an accent of
wistful inquiry, curiously at variance with his words. Stella had
almost finished the letter she had taken up when Ted made this second
observation. It was one that had reached her on the previous day, from
Laurette. in which she implored Stella that the 'mishap' about Dr.
Langdale's letter might be kept from her brother's knowledge.
'I can see,' she went on, 'by the way Ted writes, that as yet he knows
nothing. Dear, dear Stella, this is very noble and generous of you. I
dare say your dangerous illness made you see things differently. I have
little doubt that you will prevent Dr. Langdale, with your usual clear
discrimination, from covering himself with ridicule by any appeal to
law.... After all, people do not marry because others write or suppress
letters. Still, I candidly admit that my zeal on Ted's behalf--my fear,
too, lest you should find yourself involved in one of those unhappy
entanglements which wreck all a girl's future prospects--warped my
judgment. It seems as if there were a _vice de construction_ in our
lives which makes affection, and not honour, the great motive of our
actions.
'We are soon to leave for England, and hope to meet you there. Dear
Stella, let our reunion be that of those who are not only closely linked
by a tender relationship, but also those who have been dear friends from
childhood.... Might it not be possible for us to take a house together
for the rest of the London season? We shall probably be there by the
middle of June. Possibly the great mower Death may render it
unnecessary for us to hire a house. The near prospect of rank and
station in Britain--so crammed with cold decorum for the weaker sex,
with unbounded opportunities of ruin for men, and with fog for all, if
Australian travellers speak truly--makes my heart yearn more than ever
for those I love.
'Your little nephew and niece are clamouring round me. When I tell them
I am writing to Aunt Stella, they clap their little hands, thinking you
are coming; but I tell them you are far, far away, and that we must come
to you and Uncle Ted. Dear Talbot is not very well of late--nothing to
be at all anxious about. In fact, I think it is connected with his
dining so frequently at the Club, with men who, now that he is on the
eve of leaving Australia, are anxious to show their cordiality.
However, his small ailments make him only more domesticated, and, I may
say, affectionate. Perhaps that is why we women are accused of being so
fond of nursing. "When pain and anguish wring the brow," etc. No
wonder we love dear Sir Walter. He understood us well, with all our
foibles, which, in the end, seem only to endear us all the more to the
best sort of men. By the way, Ted left his "Lady of the Lake" you gave
him at Monico Lodge. Shall I bring it to you? But I forget, there will
not be time for a reply. When I was at Cannawijera a month ago I
thought of your enthusiasm for the Mallee Scrub. Seeing it for the last
time seemed to help me to understand your feeling.'
'I had better give Ted this letter to read, and then tell him all. What
better opportunity can come? And as for waiting for an indefinite
period----' thought Stella wearily. She could speak now without tears or
faltering. That strange feeling of unreality which often follows close
on prolonged emotion had seized her. It seemed as though she could
speak of herself as calmly as if she were a Japanese top-spinner, with
whose performances she had nothing to do beyond an amazed looking on.
She glanced up, and found Ted's gaze fixed searchingly on her face.
When their eyes met he flushed, and said hurriedly:
'Forgive me, Stella. You look more dead than alive--and here am I
slanging you like a great muff as I am.'
His quick penitence, when betrayed into any natural show of impatience
at what must appear to him unreasonable caprice, touched her. And then
that saving recognition of what was generous and manly in his nature, of
what was faulty in her own, came to her aid. She would not tell him in
this cold, abrupt fashion the story of a sister's sordid fraud--of a
wife's meditated irretrievable alienation. The day must yet come when
in the telling she could rob the tale of its keenest sting.
'You are not slanging me at all, Ted,' she said gently. 'I dare say my
conduct appears very silly----'
'Not a bit of it,' answered Ted stoutly. 'And it isn't Mrs. Farningham
I am thinking of so much as you. She has her brother. By Jove! that
man has eyes like a hawk. Did you know that Dustiefoot--you needn't
begin to wave your tail, you young Tory! I'm not speaking to you--has a
scar on his left paw? When I went on board with the Farninghams the
doctor came up to me much friendlier than ever before. I can't help
thinking he had some sort of a scunner against me. I expect it was
seeing me talking with those little French rips when you were lying at
death's door, I may say, and his people so much interested in you they
used to send him to inquire sometimes twice a day. I wonder, though, he
didn't send a servant. He must have taken some interest on his own
account. But he always seemed as if he would sooner keep out of my way.
I expect he thought I was a regular up-and-down fast colonial. Shows how
careful a family man ought to be. I'll give Dick a good jawing about it
yet. The moment Langdale came up this young sea-calf made a tremendous
fuss over him, and the doctor patted him and talked to him, and then
asked him for his scarred paw. "He hasn't got a scar," said I. "My
wife is awfully fond of that scallawag. I believe he's always been more
looked after than most babies." "Yes, but you know accidents will
happen to the best-beloved dogs," said the doctor. "I believe
Dustiefoot had an accident once;" and he held up his paw, and sure
enough there is the mark of some hurt. And then he said----'
'Oh, Ted, please talk of something else,' said Stella, in a low voice,
touched to the quick with this careless reminiscence which called up
Langdale before her 'with portraiture and colour so distinct' that his
presence seemed to haunt the room.
'All right,' answered Ted placidly. 'I wonder, though, you didn't take
a little more to Langdale. He's a good deal like some of those fellows
in front of your poetry-books. I don't believe he's well. And I'm sure,
Stella, you're not well. You make me think of a story about a girl you
told me long ago out of the "Arabian Nights." I don't remember her
name--but as far as being jolly went, she hadn't a leg to stand on.'
'Perhaps it was the orphan who was quite broken-hearted, having no one
to befriend her but God,' said Stella, with a faint smile.
'Oh! but you've got far more to befriend you than that,' returned Ted,
with unconscious irreverence. 'But I'll tell you what, Stella: I cannot
allow you to be poking about so much among these East-End paupers. If
you want to give them money and things, why don't you engage some
competent person to do it? There must be no end of people in London who
would be thankful to go up those filthy stairs for ten shillings a day
or so.'
'Do you think one can do everything by paying money, Ted?'