“What do you want it for, then?”
“I'm going to give it to my best policeman,” she said, and marched out of the room.
That was her only acknowledgement of her appreciation of the measures he had taken to ensure her safety. He understood, and, when telling Herold of the incident, called her, after the loose way of man, “a rum kid.” Of the obvious he was aware, and it pleased him; but subtler manifestations escaped his notice. It never occurred to him that it was more than a pleasing accident of domestic life when, on letting himself into the house with his latch-key, he should find Unity, drab and stolid, her cheeks and snub nose and prominent forehead shining in the unladylike way deplored by Miss Lindon, as if polished with yellow soap, and her skimpy hair bunched up ungracefully, with patient, unchanging eyes, awaiting him in the little hall, her hands already outstretched to take hat and stick and to help him off with his overcoat. Yet ninety-nine times out of a hundred it happened. He did not notice the orderly confusion wrought by the ingenuity of sleepless nights out of the chaos of his study. Wishes—just the poor, commonplace little wishes of household life—what could poor, commonplace little Unity, with her limited soul-horizon, do more for him? wishes vaguely formulated in his mind he found quickly and effectively realized, and worried, hard-working, honest man that he was, he took the practical comforts sometimes as a matter of course, now and then with a careless word of thanks, and never dreamed—how could he?—of the passionate endeavour whereby these poor, commonplace little things came to pass.
There can be as much beautiful expenditure of soul—as beautiful in the eyes of God, to whom, as to any philosopher with a working idea of infinity, the fall of a rose-petal must be as important as the fall of an empire—in the warming of a man's slippers before the fire by the woman who loves him as in all the heroisms of all the Joans of Arc and the Charlotte Cordays and the window-breaking, policeman-scratching, forcibly fed female martyrs of modern London that have ever existed. It is a proposition as incontrovertible as any elementary theorem of Euclid you please; but so essentially unphilosophic is man, to say nothing of woman,—for a man would sooner break stones, play bridge, go bankrupt, slaughter his wife and family, or wear a straw hat with a frock-coat than brace his mind to think—that this self-evident truth passes him by unrecognized, unperceived, unguessed.
The volcanic forces of life—essentially such as act and react between man and woman—lie hidden deep down in the soul's unknown and unsuspected cauldron, and their outward manifestations are only here and there a puff of smoke so fine and blue that it merges at once into the caressing air. The good, easy man plants his vines on the mountain-side. The sky is serene, the sun fills his grapes with joyousness. Then comes eruption, and the smiling slope is smitten into the grin of a black death's-head.
CHAPTER XV
WINTER came and melted into spring. Physically Stella had progressed beyond all hopes. Like the Lady in “The Sensitive Plant,” she walked a ruling grace about the garden of the Channel House, and nursed the daffodils and narcissi and tulips with tender hands. In these she took a passionate joy curiously exceeding that in other revelations of the great world. Indeed, during most of the winter, she had shrunk from mingling with humanity. Her zest for the new life had been dulled. She found excuses for not going beyond the garden gate, and of her own free will did not seek the society of those dear to her. The windows of her sea-chamber once more afforded her the accustomed outlook, and the gulls wheeling high in the wintry gusts again became her companions.
The Blounts let her have her way,—was she not autocrat?—putting down her hesitations and cravings for solitude to a young girl's delicate whimsies of which they could not divine the motive; for she, who had once been expansive, now had grown strangely reticent. Even Herold, who used to accompany her into the Land That Never Was, did not gain her confidence. Into those mystic regions she could admit him freely; but the Threatening Land that lay beyond the threshold of her sea-chamber a heart-gripping shyness forced her to tread alone.