Reading! What book has ever been written that can enchain the mind when the heart is throbbing with feverish despair—when the face is blistered with a sense of scorching shame? Yes, she had put up her hands and whispered the words after him in the quiet darkened room; and even in the act it rose up before her like one of the scenes in the 'Inferno' which stamp themselves on the mind of those who are intimate with Dante's 'Divine' poem, like lurid pictures that have been absolutely witnessed. She seemed to see herself among those who smote their hands despairingly above their heads, borne along in ceaseless tumult in the atmosphere eternally darkened as with sand driven by the whirlwind. A sudden catch came in her breath. She unfastened a slender ribbon that was fastened low on her neck, and drew out the ring that she had daily worn against her heart since the evening she had parted from Langdale. She kissed it as a mother kisses the face of her dead child! 'No, no, no!—I must not wear it,' she moaned; 'I must drive all this away from me. Sleeping and waking I become more enslaved with these memories. I thought to drive them from me by brute strength—to put a barrier between them and my heart; and in place of that they overwhelm me in my sleep—they come back as to a chamber swept and garnished. And now I learn to juggle and deceive. O God, God!—save me from the leprosy of falsehood to which I have been betrayed!'
Yes, it was true. She had fought down soul and instinct find memory with ruthless violence; but Nature is not to be lightly trifled with. She has strange Nemesis powers which find their own modes of reprisal. What the girl in her ignorance had dreamt would turn her love and fierce jealousy into a forsworn, perjured and impossible passion had but opened its floodgates. The moment sleep came to her the uncontrolled visions of unconsciousness, the mysterious play of the brain which lies awake and remembers, and keeps time to the beating of the heart, and calls up all the masking simulacrum of life apart from our volition, practised the cruellest treacheries upon her. Forces which had hitherto lain dormant in her nature pulsed into being only to reinforce her forbidden love.
The thought of Ted's untroubled confidence smote on her conscience with intolerable pain. She saw, as with a lightning-flash of insight, all the falsity and degradation of her position. She would tell him all—she must; he was good and generous to her, he would have patience with her, he would give her time to live down the past.... This double, treacherous existence was impossible. It would be terrible to speak to him of Langdale—but she would make him understand. He had implored her to let him do something for her, and he would not go back from this wish when he knew all. She would make her confession, and appeal to him.... Something of relief came gradually with the thought. The adamant reserve with which she had guarded this terrible crisis of her life had been part of her crushing burden. Yes, Ted would forgive her; and when the keenness of anguish and memory had passed away, she would be a true and loyal wife to him. She might still prove in a faltering, imperfect way, that love and a noble life are one.... There was a white gauze scarf looped and interwoven in front of the pale cashmere morning dress she wore. She detached this scarf, and taking the ring with the narrow white ribbon to which it was fastened, she enveloped it, fold upon fold. 'I will not look at it again for long years.' A sudden thought came to her that she would think of Langdale as dead—dead and taken from her for evermore. 'Oh, my love! my love! my love!' she cried, putting down her head, and suddenly her tears fell like summer rain.
She was weeping for the dead. Yes, he was really dead to her—the lover from whom she had parted on that serene night when heaven was flooded as with the twilight of dawn, and the soft mystic glow crept in through the interlaced foliage which hung round the veranda of that quiet house near the borders of the Peeloo Plain. Never again would they stand hand-in-hand looking with radiant faces to the years that were to be all their own. It was a crime to love him; but she might weep for him. She would tame this wild passion which came stealthily back in the visions of the night, when reason was drugged with the poppies of sleep, and conscience had relaxed its vigilance. Day by day she would think of silent graves, and of departed ones who return no more. Her whole frame was convulsed with a storm of sobs. She gave herself up to her long pent-up grief, till its very intensity brought some ray of consolation. She had been so hard, and bitter, and scornful—but she must weep for her dead; she must try and creep back to God, whom she had disbelieved and forgotten. He had wounded her so incurably; it must be that He knew of her poor, maimed, anguish-stricken existence.... Let the bells toll, and dust be given back to dust, and let her bow her head and her heart in submissive prayer. Even if God does not care for us, we must still stumble back to Him when the billows of dark despair dash against the frail skiff in which we are launched on the wild, uncertain sea of life. She had joined the sorrow-smitten throng—the great army of earth's bereaved ones. The inextinguishable craving of the heart for communion in prayer overcame her. Crouching low, with folded hands and tear-stained face, the words rose to her lips, joining her petitions with those others, beaten and chastised as she was:
'Our Father who art in heaven, forgive the days of utter rebellion and agony and despair. Forgive the storms of unlighted darkness that toss our souls; those for whom we poor stricken ones mourn are in Thy keeping—safe from the world's slow stain, from the infirmities of old age, from the bitterness of disillusion, from the subtle decay of enthusiasm for all that is good and great. They have reached a continuing city; they are bathed in the light of everlasting life. The currents of time and change, the distraction and vainglory and delusion of the world—these touch them no more forever.
'Our Father, we would that Thy will were ours.... We would fain lift up our eyes to Thee, but they are blinded with tears. Yet let us come to Thee, Infinite Source of all good, though our only offering is that of a bruised and broken and sinful heart. The pangs of loneliness and isolation; the rapturous dream of happiness changed into a sword within the bosom; the desolation of days emptied of joy—these are the poor oblations that we bring. Yet may they become to us an inspiration and a stay. When the cruel waves of anguish overcome us; when despair, like an angry sea, threatens to engulf us; when the heavens are dark and starless; when the earth seems empty of all that makes it endurable; when it seems given over to the hopeless mediocrity of natures mildewed with commonness in aim, intention, and achievement; when our days stretch before us blank and purposeless, spent and disconnected, unmeaning and futile as grains of quicksand that a great storm has borne far inland; when hope is dead and faith far off, and fears troop round us like a horde of plotting rebels, saying: There is no God—no soul—no immortality; when the mind is flooded with unbearable recollections of lost joy; when we are listless and indifferent, and overcome with fruitless grief—then, O Kindly Light! let thoughts of Thee and of the great souls whom Thou hast vivified enlarge our natures and illuminate our minds.'
Her sobs died into silence, the bitterness of her grief was spent. The door was opened, but she could only half raise her head, and Tareling, who caught one swift glimpse of her—her face pallid, grief-stricken, and tear-stained—as she crouched in silence like some dumb creature mortally wounded, retreated noiselessly with a startled, almost horrified look. He was in search of Laurette, to make some arrangements for the evening, before he went to his office. He met her in the hall.
'What is the matter with Stella?' he asked quickly, looking at his wife with an indefinable suspicion in his eyes.
'The matter with Stella?' she echoed, with a little, quick throb of terror, which she kept well in hand, however. 'Nothing that I know of—except that she has too many diamond sprays and necklaces and precious stones, and a husband who adores her.'
'Well, I don't know, but I wouldn't mind laying a thousand to one that there was some sort of deception at the root of this marriage. It's not a month since she came here from Lullaboolagana looking like a rose in June.'