CHAPTER XXII

THEY found him lying on the sofa, a pitiable object, the whole of his head from the back of his neck to his eyebrows swathed in bandages. His clothes were mere limp and discolored wrappings. They looked as though they had been wet through, for the red of his tie had run into his shirt-front and collar. The coarse black sprouts on pallid cheek and upper lip gave him an appearance of indescribable grime. His eyes were sunken and feverish.

Unity uttered a little cry as she saw him, but checked it quickly, and threw herself on her knees by his side.

“Thank God you’re alive!”

He put his hand on her head.

“I’m all right,” he said faintly; “but you shouldn’t have come. That’s why I didn’t go straight home. I didn’t want to frighten you. I’m a ghastly sight, and I should have scared your aunt out of her wits.”

“But how, in Heaven’s name, man,” said Herold, “did you get into this state?”

“Something hit me over the head, and I spent the night in rain and sea-water on the rocks.”

“On the rocks? Where? At Southcliff?”

“Yes,” said John, “at Southcliff. I was a fool to go down, but I’ve been a fool all my life, so a bit more folly doesn’t matter.” He closed his eyes. “Give me a drink, Wallie—some brandy.”

Herold went into the dining-room, which adjoined the library, and returned with decanter, syphon, and glasses. He poured out a brandy and soda for John and watched him drink it; then he realized that he, too, would be the better for stimulant. With an abstemious man’s idea of taking brandy as medicine, he poured out for himself an extravagant dose, mixed a little soda-water with it, and gulped it down.

“That’ll do me good,” said John; but on saying it he fell to shivering, despite the heat of the summer afternoon.

“You’ve caught a chill,” cried Unity. She counseled home and bed at once.

“Not yet,” he murmured. “It was all I could do to get here. Let me rest for a couple of hours. I shall be all right. I’m not going to bed,” he declared with sudden irritability; “I’ve never gone to bed in the daytime in my life. I’ve never been ill, and I’m not going to be ill now. I’m only stiff and tired.”

“You’ll go to bed here right away,” said Herold.

John protested. Herold insisted.

“Those infernal clothes—you must get them off at once,” said he. John being physically weak, his natural obstinacy gave way. Unity saw the sense of the suggestion; but it was giving trouble.

“Not a bit,” said Herold. “There’s a spare bedroom. John can have mine, which is aired. Mrs. Ripley will see to it.”

He went out to give the necessary orders. Unity busied herself with unlacing and taking off the stiffened boots. Herold returned, beckoned to Unity, and whispered that he had telephoned for a doctor. Then he said to John:

“How are you feeling, dear old man?”

“My head’s queer, devilish queer. Something fell on it last night and knocked me out of time. It was raining, and I was sheltering under the cliff on the beach, the other side of the path, where you can see the lights of the house, when down came the thing. I must have recovered just before dawn; for I remember staggering about in a dazed way. I must have taken the road round the cliff, thinking it the upper road, and missed my footing and fallen down. I came to about nine this morning, on the rocks, the tide washing over my legs. I’m black and blue all over. Wonder I didn’t break my neck. But I’m tough.”

“Thank God you’re alive!” said Unity again.

He passed his hands over his eyes. “Yes. You must have thought all manner of things, dear. I didn’t realize till Ripley told me that I hadn’t let you know. I went out, meaning to catch the 7:15 and come back by the last train. But this thing knocked all memory out of me. I’m sorry.”

Herold looked in bewilderment at the stricken giant. Even now he had not accounted for the lunatic and almost tragic adventure. What was he doing on the beach in the rain? What were the happenings subsequent to his recovering consciousness at nine o’clock?

“Does it worry you to talk?” he asked.

“No. It did at first—I mean this morning. But I’m all right now—nearly all right. I’d like to tell you. I picked myself up, all over blood, a devil of a mess, and crawled to the doctor’s—not Ransome; the other chap, Theed. He’s the nearest; and, besides, I didn’t want to go to Ransome. I don’t think any one saw me. Theed took me in and fixed me up and dried my clothes. Of course he wanted to drag me to the Channel House, but I wouldn’t let him. I made him swear not to tell them. I don’t want them to know. Neither of you must say anything. He also tried to fit me out. But, you know, he’s about five foot nothing; it was absurd. As soon as I could manage it, he stuck me in a train, much against his will, and I came on here. That’s all.”

“If only I had known!” said Herold. “I was down there all the morning.”

“You?”

“I had a letter from Julia, summoning me.”

“So had I.” He closed his eyes again for a moment. Then he asked, “How is Stella?”

“I had a long talk with her. I may have straightened things out a bit. She’ll come round. There’s no cause for worry for the present. Julia is a good soul, but she has no sense of proportion, and where Stella is concerned she exaggerates.”

When a man has had rocks fall on his head, and again has fallen on his head upon rocks, it is best to soothe what is left of his mind. And after he had partly soothed it,—a very difficult matter, first, because it was in a troubled and despairing state, and, secondly, because John, never having taken Unity into his confidence, references had to be veiled,—he satisfied the need of another brandy and soda. Then Ripley came in to announce that the room was ready.

“Ripley and I will see to him,” said Herold to Unity. “You had better go and fetch him a change of clothes and things he may want.”

“Mayn’t I wait till the doctor comes?” she pleaded.

“Of course, my dear. There’s no hurry,” said Herold.

The two men helped Risca to his feet, and, taking him to the bedroom, undressed him, clothed him in warm pajamas, and put him into the bed, where a hot-water bottle diffused grateful heat. Herold had seen the livid bruises on his great, muscular limbs.

“Any one but you,” said he, with forced cheeriness, “would have been smashed to bits, like an egg.”

“I tell you I’m tough,” John growled. “It’s only to please you that I submit to this silly foolery of going to bed.”

As soon as Ripley was dismissed, he called Herold to his side.

“I would like to tell you everything, Wallie. I couldn’t in the other room. Unity, poor child, knows nothing at all about things. Naturally. I had been worried all the afternoon. I thought I saw her—you know—hanging about outside the office. It was just before I met you at the club. I didn’t tell you,—perhaps I ought to,—but that was why I was so upset. But you’ll forgive me. You’ve always forgiven me. Anyway, I thought I saw her. It was just a flash, for she, if it was she, was swallowed up in the traffic of Fleet Street. After leaving the club, I went back to the office—verification in proofs of something in Baxter’s article. I found odds and ends to do. Then I went home, and Julia’s letter lay on my table. I’ve been off my head of late, Wallie. For the matter of that, I’m still off it. I’ve hardly slept for weeks. I found Julia’s letter. I looked at my watch. There was just time to catch the 7:15. I ran out, jumped into a taxi, and caught it just as it was starting. But as I passed by a third-class carriage,—in fact, I realized it only after I had gone several yards beyond; one rushes, you know,—I seemed to see her face—those thin lips and cold eyes—framed in the window. The guard pitched me into a carriage. I looked out for her at all the stations. At Tring Bay the usual crowd got out. I didn’t see her. No one like her got out at Southcliff. What’s the matter, Wallie?” He broke off suddenly.

“Nothing, man; nothing,” said Herold, turning away and fumbling for his cigarette-case.

“You looked as if you had seen a ghost. It was I who saw the ghost.” He laughed. And the laugh, coming from the haggard face below the brow-reaching white bandage, was horrible.

“Your brain was playing you tricks,” said Herold. “You got to Southcliff. What happened?”

“I felt a fool,” said John. “Can’t you see what a fool a man feels when he knows he has played the fool?”

Bit by bit he revealed himself. At the gate of the Channel House he reflected. He had not the courage to enter. Stella would be up and about. He resolved to wait until she went to bed. He wandered down to the beach. The rain began to fall, fine, almost imperceptible. The beacon-light in the west window threw a vanishing shaft into the darkness.

“We saw it once—don’t you remember?—years ago when you gave her the name—Stellamaris. I sat like a fool and watched the window. How long I don’t know. My God! Wallie, you don’t know what it is to be shaken and racked by the want of a woman—”

“By love for a woman, you mean,” said Herold.

“It’s the same thing. At last I saw her. She stood defined in the light. She had changed. I cried out toward her like an idiot,”—the rugged, grim half face visible beneath the bandage was grotesque, a parody of passion,—“and I stayed there, watching, after she had gone away. How long I don’t know. It was impossible to ring at the door and see Oliver and Julia.”

He laughed again. “You must have some sense of humor, my dear man. Fancy Oliver and Julia! What could I have said to them? What could they have said to me? I sat staring up at her window. The rain was falling. Everything was still. It was night. You know how quiet everything is there. Then I seemed to hear footsteps and I turned, and a kind of shape—a woman’s—disappeared. I know I was off my head, but I began to think. I had a funny experience once—I’ve never told you. It was the day she came out of prison. I sat down in St. James’s Park and fell half asleep,—that sort of dog sleep one has when one’s tired,—and I thought I saw her going for Stella—Stella in her bed at the Channel House—going to strangle her. This came into my mind, and then something hit me,—a chunk of overhanging cliff loosened by the rain, I suppose,—and, as I’ve told you, it knocked me out. But it’s devilish odd that she should be mixed up in it.”

“As I said, your brain was playing you tricks,” said Herold, outwardly calm; but within himself he shuddered to his soul. The woman was like a foul spirit hovering unseen about those he loved.

Presently the doctor, a young man with a cheery face, came in and made his examination. There was no serious damage done. The only thing to fear was the chill. If the patient’s temperature went down in the morning, he could quite safely be moved to his own home. For the present rest was imperative, immediate sleep desirable. He wrote a prescription, and with pleasant words went away. Then Unity, summoned to the room, heard the doctor’s comforting opinion.

“I’ll be with you to-morrow,” said John.

“You don’t mind leaving him to Mrs. Ripley and me just for one night?” asked Herold.

“He’s always safe with you,” Unity replied, her eyes fixed not on him, but on John Risca. “Good-by, Guardian dear.”

John drew an arm from beneath the bedclothes and put it round her thin shoulders. “Good-by, dear. Forgive me for giving you such a fright, and make my peace with auntie. You’ll be coming back with my things, won’t you?”

“Of course; but you’ll be asleep then.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said John.

She made him cover up his arm again and tucked the bedclothes snugly about him, her finger-tips lingering by his cheeks.

“I’ll leave you, too. Try and get to sleep,” said Herold.

They went together out of the room and back to the library.

“Has he said anything more?”

He stood before her trembling all over.

“What is the matter?”

He burst into an uncontrollable cry. “It’s that hellish woman again! He saw her spying on him outside his office, he saw her in a railway carriage on the train he took. Because she disappeared each time, he thinks it was an hallucination; and somehow he was aware of her presence just before the piece of rock came down.”

Unity’s face beneath the skimpy hair and rubbishy tam-o’-shanter was white and strained.

“She threw it. I knew she threw it.”

“So do I. He saw her. She disappeared as she did that night in the fog. A woman like that isn’t human. She has the power of disappearing at will. You can’t measure her cunning.”

“What did he go down for?”

He told her. Unity’s lips twitched.

“And he sat there in the rain just looking at her window?”

She put out her hand. “Good-by, Mr. Herold. When you see Miss Stellamaris, you’ll tell her I’m a good girl—in that way, you know—and that I love her. She has been a kind of beautiful angel to me—has always been with me. It’s funny; I can’t explain. But you understand. If you’d only let her see that, I’d be so happy—and perhaps she’d be happier.”

“I’ll do my utmost,” said Herold.

He accompanied her down-stairs, and when she had gone, he returned to the library and walked about. The horror of the woman was upon him. He drank another brandy and soda. After a while Ripley came in with a soiled card on a tray. He looked at it stupidly—“Mr. Edwin Travers”—and nodded.

“Shall I show the gentleman up?”

He nodded again, thinking of the woman.

When the visitor came in he vaguely recognized him as a broken-down actor, a colleague of early days. As in a dream he bade the man sit down, and gave him cigarettes and drink, and heard with his outer ears an interminable tale of misfortune. At the end of it he went to his desk and wrote out a check, which he handed to his guest.

“I can’t thank you, old man. I don’t know how to. But as soon as I can get an engagement—hello, old man,” he cried, glancing at the check, “you’ve made a funny mistake—the name!”

Herold took the slip of paper, and saw that he had made the sum payable not to Edwin Travers, but to Louisa Risca. It was a shock, causing him to brace his faculties. He wrote out another check, and the man departed.

He went softly into John’s room and found him sleeping peacefully.

Soon afterward Ripley announced that dinner was ready. It was past six o’clock.

“Great Heavens!” he cried aloud, “I’ve got to play to-night.”

After a hurried wash he went into the dining-room and sat down at the table, but the sight and smell of food revolted him. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of soup; the rest of the dinner he could not touch. The horror of the woman had seized him again. He drank some wine, pushed back his chair, and threw down his table-napkin.

“I don’t want anything else. I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you later at the theater.”

The old-fashioned Kensington street, with its double line of Queen Anne houses slumbering in the afternoon sunshine, was a mellow blur before his eyes. Whither he was going he knew: what he was going to do he knew not. The rigid self-control of the day, relaxed at times, but always kept within grip, had at last escaped him. Want of food and the unaccustomed drink had brought about an abnormal state of mind. He was aware of direction, aware, too, of the shadow-shapes of men and women passing him by, of traffic in the roadway. He walked straight, alert, his gait and general demeanor unaffected, his outer senses automatically alive. He walked down the narrow, shady Church Street, and paused for a moment or two by the summer greenery of Kensington Churchyard until there was an opportunity of crossing the High Street, now at the height of its traffic. He strode westward past the great shops, a lithe man in the full vigor of his manhood. Here and there a woman lingering in front of displays of millinery recognized the well-known actor and nudged her companion.

The horror within him had grown to a consuming thing of flame. Instead of the quiet thoroughfares down which he turned, he saw picture after shuddering picture—the woman and Stellamaris, the woman and John Risca. She attacked soul as well as body. The pictures took the forms of horrible grotesques. Within, his mind worked amazingly, like a machine escaped from human control and running with blind relentlessness. He had said years ago that he would pass through his hell-fire. He was passing through it now.

The destroyer must be kept from destroying or be destroyed. Which of these should be accomplished through his agency? One or the other. Of one thing he was certain, with an odd, undoubting certainty: that he would find her, and finding her, that he would let loose upon her the wrath of God. She should be chained up forever or he would strangle her. Shivering thrills diabolically delicious ran through him at the thought. Supposing he strangled her as he would a mad cat? That were better. She would be out of the world. He would be fulfilling his destiny of sacrifice. For the woman he loved and for the man he loved why should he not do this thing? What but a legal quibble could call it murder? Stellamaris’s words rang in his ears: “You say you love me like that?”

“Yes, I love you like that. I love you like that,” he cried below his breath as he walked on.

He knew where she lived, the name by which she passed. John had told him many times. There were few things in John’s life he did not know. He knew of the Bences, of Mrs. Oscraft, the fluffy-haired woman who lived in the flat below. Amelia Mansions, he was aware, were in the Fulham Road. But when he reached that thoroughfare, he stood dazed and irresolute, realizing that he did not know which way to turn. A passing postman gave him the necessary information. The trivial contact with the commonplace restored in a measure his mental balance. He went on. By Brompton Cemetery he felt sick and faint and clung for a minute or two to the railings. He had eaten nothing since early morning, and then only a scrap of bacon and toast; he had drunk brandy and wine, and he had lived through a day in which the maddening stress of a lifetime had been concentrated.

One or two passers-by stared at him, for he was as white as a sheet. A comfortable, elderly woman, some small shopkeeper’s wife, addressed him. Was he ill? Could she do anything for him? The questioning was a lash. He drew himself up, smiled, raised his hat, thanked her courteously. It was nothing. He went on, loathing himself as men do when the flesh fails beneath the whip of the spirit.

He was well now, his mind clear. He was going to the woman. He would save those he loved. If it were necessary to kill her, he would kill her. On that point his brain worked with startling clarity. If he did not kill her, she would be eventually killed by John; for John, he argued, could not remain in ignorance forever. If John killed her, he would be hanged. Much better that he, Walter Herold, whom Stellamaris did not love, should be hanged than John—much better. And what the deuce did it matter to anybody whether he were hanged or not? He laughed at the elementary logic of the proposition. The solution of all the infernally intricate problems of life is, if people only dared face it, one of childish simplicity. It was laughable. Walter Herold laughed aloud in the Fulham Road.

It was so easy, so uncomplicated. He would see her. He would do what he had to do. Then he would take a taxicab to the theater. He must play to-night. Of course he would. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. Only he hoped that, Leonora Gurney wouldn’t worry him. He would manage to avoid her during that confounded wait in the first act, when she always tried to get him to talk. He would play the part all right. He was a man and not a stalk of wet straw. After the performance he would give himself up. No one would be inconvenienced. He would ask the authorities to hurry on matters and give him a short shrift and a long rope; but the length of the rope didn’t matter these days, when they just broke your neck. There was no one dependent on him. His brothers and sisters, many years his seniors,—he had not seen them since he was a child,—had all gone after their father’s death to an uncle in New Zealand. They were there still. The mother, who had remained with him, the Benjamin, in England, had died while he was at Cambridge. He was free from family-ties. And women? He was free, too. There had only been one woman in his life, the child of cloud and sea foam.

Stellamaris, star of the sea, now dragged through the mire of mortal things! She should go back. She should go back to her firmament, shining down upon, and worshiped by, the man she loved. And he, God!—he should be spared the terrifying agony of it.

Thus worked the brain which Walter Herold told himself was crystal clear.

It was clear enough, however, to follow the postman’s directions. He took the turning indicated and found the red-brick block, with the name “Amelia Mansions” carved in stone over the entrance door. The by-street seemed to be densely populated. He went into the entrance-hall and mechanically looked at the list of names. Mrs. Rawlings’s name was followed by No. 7. He mounted the stairs. On the landing of No. 7 there were a couple of policemen, and the flat door was open, and the length of the passage was visible. Herold was about to enter when they stopped him.

“You can’t go in, sir.”

“I want Mrs. Rawlings.”

“No one can go in.”

He stood confused, bewildered. An elderly, buxom woman, with a horrified face, who just then happened to come out of a room near the doorway, saw him and came forward.

“You are Mr. Herold,” she asked.

“Yes; I want to see Mrs. Rawlings.”

“It’s all right, constable,” she said in a curiously cracked voice. “Let this gentleman pass. Come in, sir. I am Mrs. Bence.”

He entered the passage. She spoke words to him the import of which he did not catch. His brain was perplexed by the guard of policemen and the open flat. She led him a short distance down the passage. He stumbled over a packed kit-bag. She threw open a door. He crossed the threshold of a vulgarly furnished drawing-room, the electric lights turned on despite the daylight of the July evening. There were four figures in the room. Standing and scribbling in note-books were two men, one in the uniform of a sergeant of police, the other in a frock-coat, obviously a medical man. On the floor were two women, both dead. One was John Risca’s wife, and the other was Unity. And near by them lay a new, bright revolver.