He stood and watched her wearily mounting the stairs until she disappeared at the turn of the landing, the old hound scrabbling up behind her.
CHAPTER XXI
HEROLD caught his train. He had accomplished his mission; Stella had spoken. In a few words he had enlightened Stella's unhappy guardians.
“Be gentle with her,” he had recommended. “Don't try to force her confidence. Don't let Ransome feel her pulse too often or give her physic. Talk about the tropics, and try to stimulate her interest and make her think she would like to go on a sea-voyage. Or, if you can get hold of a lost baby, stick it in the garden where she can find it.”
He had talked bravely to the old people, who would have cut off each other's heads—and their own, for the matter of that—to bring back the Stellamaris of a year ago. They clung to him pathetically. If he had counselled them to shut Stella in a room and read the minor prophets aloud to her, they would have obeyed him with unquestioning meekness. With a smile on his lips, he had put heart into them. Lady Blount had kissed him, and Sir Oliver, watery-eyed, had wrung his hand.
In the empty carriage of the train he gave way, as your highly strung, sensitive man must do, if he would avoid disaster. He did not think. To think implies an active process. But thoughts came tumultuous, and without a struggle he let them assail him. He felt that if he attempted to put into logical order the intricacies of passionate emotion in which he and John and Stella and Unity were involved, if he attempted to gage the effect on all their lives of this new horror brought therein by the murderous devil-woman, if he allowed himself to think of Stella's challenge, “You say you love me like that?” he would go mad. Let the burning thoughts sear his brain as they listed; his sanity demanded passive surrender.
At Victoria Station he collected his wits so as to deal with the commonplace routine of life. He looked at the clock, rapidly calculating. He would have time to go home, bolt some food and drink, and go off to keep his appointment with the men of money. He drove to his house in Kensington in a taxicab, and, telling the driver to wait, let himself in with his latchkey. His man met him in the hall.
“A lady waiting to see you, sir.”