SHK STOOD rolSKl) OS A OOOMK'S HAPKKT IN TllK MIDST OK A HAKKI.K OK ALI, Cdl-olHS. Tjiji'e -I'.i. THE PATH OF A STAR BY MRS. EVERARD COTES (SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN 1 WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. ,i. TOWNSEND TORONTO W. J. GAGE & COMPANY 1899 WMITKD 181; .) toT^S^ £J. D Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, In the office of tlio Minister of Agriculture, by Thk W.J. GAGE COMPANY (Limited), in tile year one tliousand eiglit hundred and ninety-nine. y oftho 3d), in THH PATH OF A STAR BY THE SAME AUTHOR A Social Departure An American Girl in London The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib A Daughter of To-Day Vernon's Aunt His Honour and a Lady The Story of Sonny Sahib A Voyage of Consolation LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS , PAGE SHK STOOD POISED ON A COOLIE's BASKET IN THE MIDST OF A RABBLE OF ALL COLOURS . . . Frontispiece "can you not be SILENT?" ..... "say that you'll marry me" . she clinked the rupees together and held them out to HIM ....... SHE STOOD SILENT, STRICKEN WITH ASTONISHMENT HE FOUND HIS SISTER IN THE ACT OF REPLACING A VOLUME UPON ITS PROFESSIONAL SHELF .... "I AM GOING NOW," SHE SAID; " IT ISN'T QUITE SUITABLE HERB » "WHAT ARE THOSE TWO WORDS, MISS LIVINGSTONE? I can't quite make THEM OUT " . HE KNOCKED AT A DOOR UPON WHICH WAS PASTED THE NAME IN LARGE LETTERS ..... THEY LAUGHED SO IMPRUDENTLY THAT SISTER ANN FRANCES TURNED HER DRAPED HEAD TO LOOK BACK AT THEM . SHE LET THEM SLOWLY SLIDE OUT OF HER FINGERS INTO THE WAVES BELOW ..... "god's WAYFARER," SHE MURMURED . • 69 114 140 156 171 203 209 248 281 296 THE PATH OF A STAR CHAPTER I SHE pushed the portiere aside with a curved havJ and gracefully separated fini^ers; it was a staccato movement and her body followed it af^-^r an instant's poise of hesitation, head thrust a little forward, eyes inquiring and a tentative smi'e, although she knew precisely who was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress. She entered the room with a little stride and then crossed it quickly, the train of her morning gown — it cried out of luxury with the cheapest voice — taking folds of great audacity as she bent her face in its loose mass of hair over Laura Filbert, sitting on the edge of a bamboo sofa, and said — *' You poor thing ! Oh, you poor thing ! " She took Laura's hand as she spoke, and tried to keep it ; but the hand was neutral, and she let it go. "It is a hand," she said to herself, in one of those quick reflections that so often visited her ready-made, " that turns the merely inquiring mind away. Nothing but feeling could hold it." Miss Mlbert made the C(jnventional effort to rise, but it came to nothing, or to a mere embarrassed accent of their greeting. Then her voice showed this THK PATH OF A STAR ! feeling to be superficial, made nothing of it, pushed it to one side. " I suppose you cannot see the foolishness of your pity," she said. " Oh Miss Howe, I am happier than you are — much happier." Her bare feet, as she spoke, nestled into the coarse Mirzapore rug on the floor, and her eye lingered approvingly upon an Owari vase three feet high, and thick with the gilded landscape of Japan, which stood near it, in the cheap magnificence of the room. Hilda smiled. Her smile acquiesced in the world she had found, acquiesced, with the gladness of an explorer, in Laura Filbert as a feature of it. ** Don't be too sure," she cried ; " I am very happy. It is such a pleasure to see you." Her gaze embraced Miss Filbert as a person, and Miss Filbert as a pictorial fact, but that was because she could not help it. Her eyes were really engaged only with the latter Miss Filbert. "Much happier than you are," Laura repeated, slowly moving her head from side to side as if to negati\ e contradiction in advance. She smiled too; it was as if she had remembered a former habit, from politeness. "Of course you are — of course!" Miss Howe acknowledged. The words were mellow and vibrant ; her voice seemed to dwell upon them with a kind of rich affection. Her face covered itself with serious sweetness. " I can imagine the beatitudes you feel — by your clothes." The girl drew her feet under her, and her hand went up to the only semi-conventional item of her attire. It was a brooch that exclaimed in silver letters " Glory to His Name ! " " It is the dress of the Army in this country," she said ; " I would not change it for the wardrobe of a queen." "That's just what I mean." Miss Howe leaned THE PATH OF A STAR back in her chair with her head among its cushions, and sent her words fluently across the room, straight and level with the glance from between her half- closed eyelids. A fine sensuous appreciation of the indolence it was possible to enjoy in the East clung about her. "To live on a plane that lifts you up like that — so that you can 6efy all criticism and all convention, and go about the streets like a mark of exclamation at the selfishness of the world — there must be something very consummate in it or you couldn't go on. At least I couldn't." " I suppose I do look odd to you." Her voice took a curious, soft, uplifted note. ** I wear three garments only — the garments of my sisters who plant the young shoots in the rice-fields, and carry bricks for the building of rich men's houses, and gather the dung of the roadways to burn for fuel. If the Army is to conquer India it must march bare-footed and bare-headed all the way. All the way," Laura repeated, with a tremor of musical sadness. Her eyes were fixed in appeal upon the other woman's. " And if the sun beats down upon my uncovered head, I think, ' It struck more fiercely upon Calvary' ; and if the way is sharp to my unshod feet, I say, ' At least I have no cross to bear.' " The last words seemed almost a chant, and her voice glided from them into singing — "The blessed Saviour died for me, On the cross ! On the cross ! He bore my sins at Calvary, On the rugged cross ! " She sang softly, her body thrust a little forward in a tender swaying — " Behold His hands and feet and side, The crown of thorns, the crimson tide, 'Forgive them, Father ! ' loud He cried, On the rugged cross ! " THE PATH Ol^' A STAR "Oh, thank you !" Miss Howe cxcl.iimcd. Then she muimurefl aiijain, " Tliat's just wliat 1 mean." A biankness came over tlie 7 on her feet as the others raised their heads, breaking forth clear and jubilant. •* I am so wondrously saved from sin, Jesus so sweetly abides within ; There at the Cross where He took me in. Glory to His name ! " She smiled as she sang. It was a happy confident smile, and it was plain that she longed to believe it the glad reficction of the last ten minutes' spiritual experi- cncti of many who heard her. Lindsay's perception of this was immediate and keen, and when her eyes rested for an instant of glad inquiry upon his in the chartered intimacy of her calling, he felt a pang of com- punction. It was a formless reproach, too vague for anything like a charge, but it came nearest to defining itself in the idea that he had gone too far — he wlio had not left his seat. When the hymn was finished, and Ensign Sand said, " The meeting is now open for testimonies," he knew that all her hope was upon him, though she looked at the screen above his head ; and he sat abashed, with a prodigal sense surging through him of what he would rejoice to do for her in compensation. In the little chilly silence that followed he surprised his own eyes moist with dis- appointment — it had all been so anxious and so vain — and he felt relief and gratitude when the man who beat the drum stood up and announced that he had been saved for eleven years, with details abcut how badly he stood in need of it when it happened. " Hallelujah ! " said Ensign Sand cheerfully, with a meretricious air of hearing it for the first time. "Any more?" and a Norwegian sailor lurched shamefacedly upon his feet. He had a counle of inches of straggling yellow beard all round his face, and fingered an old felt hat. llTli' 38 THE PATH OF A STAR ! i! i J IP 11 ill ill!' Hi: . .11 v:::i:li: mil mm W ijj "" 11! !i " I haf to say only dis word. I goin' sdop by Jesus. Long time I subbose I sdop by Jesus. I subbose " " Glor)^ be to God ! " remarked Ensign Sand again, spiking the guns of the Duke's Own who were inclined to be amused. "That will do, thank you. Now, is there nobody else? Speak up, friends. It'll do you no harm, none whatever; it'll do you that much good you'll be surprised. Now, who'll be the next to say a word for Jesus?" She was nodding encouragement at the negro cook as if she knew him for a wavering soul, and he, sunk in his gleaming white collar, was aware, in silent smiling misery, that the expectations of the meeting were toward him. Laura had again hidden her eyes in her hand. The negro fingered his watch chain foolishly, and the prettiest of the East Indian half-castes tried hard to disguise her perception that an African in his best clothes under conviction of sin was the funniest thing in the world. The silence seemed to focus itself upon the cook, who fumbled at his coat collar and cleared his voice. It was a shock to all concerned when Stephen Arnold, picking up his hat, got upon his feet instead. " I also," he said, " would offer my humble testimony to the grace of God — with all my heart." It was as if he had repeated part of the creed in the performance of his office. Then he turned and bent gravely to Lindsay, " Shall we go now ? " he whispered, and the two made their way to the door, leaving a silence behind them which Lindsay imagined, on the part of Ensign Sand at least, to be somewhat resentful. As they passed out a voice recovered itself, and cried, " Halle- lujah!" It was Liiiia's; and all the way to THE PATH OF A STAR 39 the club — Arnold Lindsay listened to ious appeal to th was dining with him there— his friend's analysis of relirr- .v,„. c^ppcai to me emotions, but chieflv hoirH Hallelujah ! i I :ii;i;!l?li CHAPTER IV WHEN Alicia Livingstone, almost believing she liked it, drove to Number Three, Lai Behari's Lane, and left cards upon Miss Hilda Howe, she was only partially rewarded. Through the plaster gate-posts, badly in want of repair, and bearing, sunk in one of them, a marble slab announcing " Residence with Board," she perceived the squalid attempt the place made at respectability, the servants in dirty livery salaaming curiously, the over-fed squirrel in a cage in the door, the pair of damaged wicker chairs in the porch, suggesting the iii,i easiest intercourse after dinner, the general discolor- ation. She observed with irritation that it was a down-at-heels shrine for such a divinity, in spite of its six dusty crotons in crum.bling plaster urns, but the irritation was rather at her own repulsion to the place than at any inconsistency it presented. What she demanded and expected of herself was that Number Three, Lai Behari's Lane should be pleasing, interesting, acceptable on its merits as a cheap Calcutta boarding-house. She found herself so un- able to perceive its merits that it was almost a relief to see nothing of Miss Howe either; Hilda had gone to rehearsal, to the "dance-house" the servant said, eyeing the unusual landau. Alicia rolled back into streets with Christian names, distressed by an uncertainty as to whether her visit had been a 40 !',:■:! li THE PATH OF A STAR 41 disappointment or an escape. By the next day, however, she was well pulled together in favour of the former conclusion — she could nearly always persuade herself of such things in time — and wrote a frank sweet little note in her picturesque hand — she never joined more than two syllables — to say how sorry she had been, and would Miss Howe come to lunch on Friday. " I should love to make it dinner," she said to herself, as she sealed the envelope, " but before one knows how she will behave in connection with the men — I suppose one must think of the other people." It was Friday, and Hilda was lunching. The two had met among the faint-tinted draperies of Alicia's drawing-room — there was something auroral even about the mantelpiece — a little like diplomatists using a common tongue native to neither of them. Perhaps Alicia drew the conventions round her with the greater fluency ; Hilda had more to cover, but was less particular about it. The only thing she was bent upon making imperceptible was her sense of the comedy of Miss Livingstone's effort to receive her as if she had been anybody else. Alicia was hardly aware of what she wanted to conceal, unless it was her impression that Miss Howe's dress was cut a trifle too low in the neck, that she was almost too effective in that cream and yellow to be quite right. Alicia remembered afterwards to smile at it, that her first ten minutes of intercourse with Hilc'a Howe were dominated by a lively desire to set Celine at her — with such a foundation to work upon what could Celine not have done? She remembered her surprise, too, at the ordinary things Hilda said in that rich voice, even in the tempered drawing-room tones of which resided a hint of the seats nearest the exit under the gallery, and her wonder at the luxury 42 THE PATH OF A STAR of gesture that went with them, movements which seemed to imply blank verse and to be thrown away upon two women and a little furniture. A conscious- ness stood in the room between them, and their commonplaces about the picturesqueness of the bazar rode on long absorbed regards, one reading, the other anxious to read ; yet the encounter was so conven- tionally creditable to them both that they might have smiled past each other under any circumstances next day and acknowledged no demand for more than the smile. The cutlets had come before Hilda's impression was at the back of her head, her defences withdrawn, her eyes free and content, her elbow on the table. They had found a portrait-painter. " He has such an eye," said Alicia, ** for the possibilities of character." " Such an eye that he develops them. I know one man he painted. I suppose when the man was born he had an embryo soul, but in the meantime he and everybody else had forgotten about it. All but Salter. Salter re-created it on the original lines, and brought it up, and gave it a lodging behind the man's wrinkles. 1 saw the picture. It was fantastic — psychologically." " Pyschology has a lot to say to portrait-painting, I know," Alicia said. " Do let him give you a little more. It's only Moselle." She felt quite direct and simple too in uttering her postulate. Her eyes had a friendly, unembarrassed look, there was nothing behind them but the joy of talking intelligently about Salter. Hilda did not even glance away. She looked at her hostess instead, with an expression of candour so admirable that one might easily have mistaken it to be insincere. It was part of her that she could I THE PATH OF A STAR 43 swim in any current, and it was pleasant enough, for the moment, to swim in Alicia's. Both the Moselle and the cutlets, moreover, were of excellent quality. "It's everything to everything, don't you think? And especially, thank Heaven, to my trade." Her voice softened the brusqueness of this ; the way she said it gave it a right to be said in any terms. That was the case with flagrancies of hers sometimes. " To discover motives and morals and passions and ambitions and to make a picture of them with your own body — your face and hands and voice — compare our plastic opportunity with the handling of a brush to do it, or a pen or a chisel ! " " I know what you mean," said Alicia. She had a little flush, and an excited hand among the wine- glasses. " No, I don't want any ; please don't bother me ! " to the man at her elbow with something in aspic. " It's much more direct — your way." " And, I think, so much more primitive, so much earlier sanctioned, abiding so originally among the instincts ! Oh yes ! if we are lightly esteemed it is because we are bad exponents. The ideal has dignity enough. They charge us, in their unimaginable stupidity, with failing to appreciate our lines, especi- ally when they are Shakespeare's — with being unliterary. You might — good Heavens ! — as well accuse a painter of not being a musician ! Our business lies behind the words — they are our mere medium ! RosaHnd wasn't literary — why should I be? But don't indulge me in my shop, if it bores you," Hilda added lightly, aware as she was that Miss Livingstone was never further from being bored. " Oh, please go on ! If you only knew," her lifted eyebrows confessed the tedium of Calcutta small talk. "But why do you say you are lightly esteemed? I; 44 THE PATH OF A STAR Surely the public is a touchstone — and you hold the public in the hollow of your hand ! " Hilda smiled. " Dear old public ! It does its best for us, doesn't it ? One loves it, you know, as sailors love the sea, never believing in its treachery in the end. But I don't know why I say we are lightly esteemed, or why I dogmatise about it at all. I've done nothing — I've no right. In ten years perhaps — no, five — I'll write signed articles for the New Review about modern dramatic tendencies. Mean- while you'll have to consider that the value of my opinions is prospective." " But already you have succeeded — you have made a place." " In Coolgardie, in Johannesburg, I think they remember me in Trichinopoly too, and — yes, it may be so — in Manila. But that wasn't legitimate drama," and Hilda smiled again in a way that coloured her unspoken reminiscence, to Alicia's eyes, in rose and gold. She waited an instant for these tints to materialise, but Miss Howe's smile slid discreetly into her wineglass instead. "There's immense picturesqueness in the Philip- pines," she went on, her look of thoughtful criticism contrasting in the queerest way with her hat. " Real ecclesiastical tyranny with pure traditions. One wonders what America will do with those friars, when she does go there." " Do you think she is goiiig? " asked Alicia vaguely. It was the merest politeness — she did not wait for a reply. With a courageous air which became her charmingly, she went on, " Don't you long to submit yourself to London ? I should." " Oh, I must. I know I must. It's in the path of duty and conscience — it's not to be put off for ever. Rut one dreads the chained slavery of London " — she THE PATH OF A STAR 45 hesitated before the audacity of adding, "the sordid hundred ni^dits," but Alicia divined it, and caught her breath as if she had watched the other woman make a hazardous leap. " You are magnificently sure," she said. Alicia herself felt curiously buoyed up and capable, conscious of vague intuitions of immediate achievement. The lunch -table still lay between the two, but it had become in a manner intangible ; the selves of them had drawn together, and regarded each other with absorbent eyes. In Hilda's there was an instant of consideration before she said — " I might as well tell you — you won't misunder- stand — that I cif/i sure. I expect things of myself. I hold a kind of mortgage on my success ; when I foreclose it will come, bringing the long, steady, grasping chase of money and fame, eyes fixed, never a day to live in, only to accomplish, every moment straddled with calculation, an end to all the byways where one finds the colour of the sun. The successful London actress, my dear — what existence has she? A straight flight across the Atlantic in a record- breaker, so many nights in New York, so many in Chicago, so many in a Pullman car, and the net result in every newspaper — an existence of pure artificiality infested by reporters. It's like living in the shell of your personality. It's the house for ever on your back ; at the last you are buried in it, smirk- ing in your coffin with a half-open eye on the floral offerings. There never was reward so qualified by its conditions." " Surely there v/ould be some moments of splendid compensation ? " " Oh yes ; and for those in the end we are all willing to perish ! But then you know all, you have done all ; there is nothing afterwards but the eternal 46 THE PATH OF A STAR strain to keep even with yourself. I don't suppose I could begin to make you see the joys of a strolling player — they aren't much understood even in the profession — but there are so many, honesth', that London being at the top of the hill, I'm not panting up. My way of going has twice wound round the world already. But I'm talking like an illustrated interview. You will grant the impertinence of all I've been saying when I tell you that I've never yet had an illustrated interview." "Aren't they almost always vulgar? '* Alicia asked. " Don't they make you sit the wrong way on a chair, in tights?" Hilda threw her head back and laughed, almost, Alicia noted, like a man. She certainly did not hide her mouth with 1^^ hands or her handkerchief, as women often do in oursts of hilarity ; she laughed freely, and as much as she wanted to, and it was as clear as possible that tights presented themselves quite preposterously to any discussion of h.r pro- fession. They were things to be taken for granted, like the curtain and the wings ; they had no relation to clothing in the world. Alicia laughed too. After all, they were absurd — her outsider's prejudices. She said something like that, and Hilda seemed to soar again for her point of view about the illustrated interviews. " They are atrocities," she said. " On their merits ihey ought to be cast out of even the suburbs of art and literature. But they help to make the atmosphere that gives us power to work, and if they do that, of course " and the pursed seriousness of her lips gave Alicia the impression that, though the whole world took offence, the expediency of the illustrated interview was beyond di-scussion. The servant brought them coffee. " Shall we smoke THE PATH OF A STAR 47 here," said Miss Livingstone, "or in the drawing- room ? •' "Oh, do you want to? Are you quite sure you like it? Please don't on my account — you really mustn't. Suppose it should make you ill?" If Hilda felt any tinge of amusement she kept it out of her face. Nothing was there but cheerful con- cern. " It won't make me ill." Alicia lifted her chin with delicate assertivencss. " I suppose you do smoke, don't you?" " Occasionally — with some people. Honestly, have you ever done it before?" " Four times," said Alicia, and then turned rose- colour with the apprehension that it sounded amateurish to have counted them. " I thought it was one of your privileges to do it always, just as you " " Go to bed with our boots on and put ice down the back of some Serene Highncss's neck. I suppose it is, but now and then I prefer to dispense with it. In my bath, for instance, and almost always in omnibuses." " How absurd you are ! Then we'll stay here." Miss Howe softly manipulated her cigarette and watched Alicia sacrifice two matches. " There's Rosa Norton of our company," she went on. " Poor, dear old Rosy ! She's fifty-three— grey hair smooth back, you know, and a kind of look of anxious mamma. And it gets into her eyes and chokes her, poor dear ; but blow her, if she won't be as Bohemian as anybody. I've seen her smoke in a bonnet with strings tied under her chin. I got up and went away." " But I cant possibly affect you in that vvay," said Alicia, putting her cigarette down to finish, as an 48 THE PATH OF A STAR afterthought, a marron glacd " I'm not old and I'm not grotesque." " No, but — oh, all right. After you with the matches, please." " I beg your pardon. How thoughtless of me ! Dear me, mine has gone out. Do you suppose anything is wrong with them ? Perhaps they'ie damp." "Trifle dry, if anything," Hilda returned, with the cigarette between her lips, "but in excellent order, really." She took it between her first and second finger for a glance at the gold letters at the end, leaned back and sent slow, luxurious spirals through her nostrils. It was rather, Alicia reflected, like a horse on a cold day — she hoped Miss Howe wouldn't do it again. But she presently saw that it was Miss Howe's way of doing it. " No, you're not old and grotesque," Hilda said contemplatively ; *' You're young and beautiful." The freedom seemed bred, imperceptibly and enjoyably, from the delicate cloud in the air. Alicia flushed ever so little under it, but took it without wincing. She had less than the common palate for flattery 01 the obvious kind, but this was something different — a mere casual and unprejudiced statement of fact. " Fairly," she said, not without surprise at her own calmness ; and there was an instant of silence, during which the commonplace seemed to be dismissed between them. " You made a vivid impression here last year," said Alicia. She felt delightfully terse and to the point. "You mean Mr. Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay is very impressionable. Do you know him well?" Alicia closed her lips, and a faint line graved itself on each side of them. Her whole face sounded a THE PATH OF A STAR 49 retreat, and her eyes were cold — it would have annoyed her to know how cold — with distance. " He is an old friend of my brother's," she said. Hilda had the sensation of coming unexpectedly, through the lightest loam, upon a hard surface. She looked attentively at the red heart of her cigarette crisped over with grey, in its blackened calyx. "Most impressionable," she went on, as if Alicia had not spoken. " As to the rest of the people — bah ! you can't rouse Calcutta. It is sunk in its torpid liver, and imagines itself superior. It's really funny, you know, the way hepatic influences can be idealised — made to serve ennobling ends. But Mr. Lindsay is — different." "Yes?" Miss Livingstone's intention was neutral, but, in spite of her, the asking note was in the word. " We have done some interesting things together here. He has shown me the queerest places. Yester- day he made me go with him to VVellesley Square, to look at his latest enthusiasm standing in the middle of it." "A statue?" "No, a woman, preaching and warbling to the pc( pic. She wasn't new to me — I knew her before he did — but the picture was, and the performance. She stood poised on a coolie's basket in the midst of a rabble of all colours, like a fallen angel — I mean a dropped one. Light seemed to come from her, from her hair or her eyes or something. I almost expected to see her sail away over the palms into the sunset when it was ended." " It sounds most unusual," Alicia said, with a light smile. Her interest was rather obviousl\* curbed. " It happens every day, really, only one doesn't stop and look ; one doesn't go round the corner." 4 50 THE PATH. OF A STAR There was another little silence, full of the unwillingness of Miss Livingstone's desire to be informed. Hilda knocked the ash of her cigarette into her finger-bowl, and waited. The pause grew so stiff with embarrassment that she broke it herself. *' And I regret to say it was I who introduced them," she said. " Introduced whom ? " " Mr. Lindsay and Miss Laura Filbert of the Salvation Army. They met at Number Three ; she had come after my soul. I think she was dis- appointed," Hilda went on tranquilly, "because I would only lend it to her while she was there." " Of the Salvation Army ! I can't imagine why you should regret it. He is always grateful to be amused." " Oh, there is no reason to doubt his gratitude. He is rather intense about it. And — I don't know that my regret is precisely on Mr. Lindsay's account. Did I say so?" They were simple, amiable words, and their pertinence was very far from insistent ; but Alicia's crude blush — everythini^ else about her was so perfectly worked out — cried aloud that it was too sharp a pull up. " Perhaps though," Hilda hurried on with a pang, " we generalise too much about the men." What Miss Livingstone would have found to say — she had certainly no generalisation to offer about Duff Lindsay — had not a servant brought her a card at that moment, is embarrassing to consider. The card saved her the necessity. She looked at it blankly for an instant, and then exclaimed, ** My cousin, Stephen Arnold ! Pie's a reverend — a Clarke Mission priest, and he will come .straight in here. What shall we do with our cigarettes ? " THE PATH OF A STAR 51 Miss ITowc had a pleasurable sense that the situation was devclopiuir. *' Yours has ^tnc out a^ain, so it doesn't much matter, does it? JJrown the corpse in here, and I'll pretend it belongs to me." She pushed the fuifjer- bowl across, and Alicia's discouraged remnant went into it. *' Don't ask me to sacrifice mine," she added, and there was no time for remonstrance ; Arnold's voice was lifting itself at the door. " Pray may I come in ? " he called from behind the portiere. Hilda, who sat with her back to it, smiled in enjoying recognition of the thin, high academic note, the prim finish of the inflection. It reminded her of a man she knew who "did" curates beautifully. Arnold walked past her with his quick, humble, clerical gait, and it amused her to think that he bent over Alicia's hand as if he would bless it. " You can't guess how badly I want a cup of coffee." He flavoured what he said, and made it pretty, like a woman. *' Let me confess at once, that is what brought me." He stopped to laugh ; there was a hint of formality and self-sacrifice even in tha\ "It is coffee -time, isn't it?" Then he turned and saw Hilda, and she was, at the momt nt, flushed with the luxury of her sensations, a vision as splendid as she must have been to him unusual. But he only closed his lips and thrust his chin out a little, with his left hand behind him in one of his intensely clerical attitudes, and so stood waiting. Hilda reflected afterwards that she could hardly have expected him to exclaim, " Whom have we here?" with upraised hands, but she had to acknow- ledge her flash of surprise at his self-possession. She noted, too, his grave bow when Alicia mentioned them to each other, that there was the habit of 52 THE PATH OF A STAR deference in it, yet that it waved her courteously, so to speak, out of his life. It was all as interesting as the materialisation of a quaint tradition, and she decided not, after all, to begin a trivial comedy for herself and Alicia, by asking the Reverend Stephen Arnold whether he objected to tobacco. She had an instant's circling choice of the person she would represent to this priest in the little intermingling half-hour of their lives that lay shaken out before them, and dropped unerringly. It really hardly mattered, but she always had such instants. She was aware of the shadow of a regret at the opulence of her personal effect ; her hand went to her throat and drew the laces closer together there. An erect- ness stole into her body as she sat, and a look into her eyes that divorced her at a stroke from anything that could have spoken to him of too general an accessibility, too unthinking a largesse. She went on smoking, but almost immediately her cigarette took its proper note of insignificance. Alicia, speak- ing of it once afterwards to Arnold, found that he had forgotten it. "Even in College Street you have heard of Miss Howe," Alicia said, and the negative, very readable in Arnold's silent bow, brought Hilda a flicker of happiness at her hostess's expense. *' I don't think the posters carry us as far as College Street," she said, " but I am not difficult to explain, Mr. Arnold. I act with Mr. Stanhope's Company. If you lived in Chowringhee you couldn't help knowing all about me, the letters are so large." The bounty of her well-spring of kindntss was in it under the candour and the simplicity ; it was one of those least of little things which are enough. Arnold smiled back at her, and she saw recognition leap through the armour-plate of his ecclesiasticism. THE PATH OF A STAR 53 He glanced away again quickly, and looked at the floor as he said he feared they were terribly out of it in College Street, for which, however, he had evidently no apology to offer. He continued to look at the floor with a careful air, as if it presented points pertinent to the situation. Hilda felt herself — it was an odd sensation — too sunny upon the nooked, retiring current that flowed in him. He miglit have turned to the cool accustomed shadow that Alicia made, but she was aware that he did not, that he was struggling through her strangeness and his shyness for something to say to her. He stirred his cofiee, and once or twice his long upper lip trembled as if he thought he had found it ; but it was Alicia who talked, making light accusations against the rigours of the Mission House, comi)laining of her cousin that he was altogether given over to bonds and bands, that she personally would soon cease to hold him in affection at all ; she saw so little of him it wasn't really worth while. This was old fencing ground between them, and Stephen parried her pleasantly enough, but his eyes strayed speculatively to the other end of the table, where, however, they rose no higher than the firm, lightly-moulded hand that held the cigarette. " If I could found a monastic order," Hilda said, "one of the rules should be a week's compulsory retirement into t)ie world four times a year." She spoke with a kind of grave brightness ; it was difficult to know whether she was altogether in jest. " There would be secession all over the place," Arnold responded, with his repressed smile. "You would get any number of probationers ; I wonder whether you would keep them ! " " During that week," Hilda went on, " they should 54 THH PATH OF A STAR be compelled to dine and dance every night, to read a * Problem ' novel every morning before luncheon, to marry and be given in marriage, and to go to all the variety entertainments. Think of the austere bliss of the return to the cloisters ! All joy lies in a succession of sensations, they say. Do you re- member how Lord Ormont arranged his pleasures ? Oh yes, my brotherhood would be popular, as soon as it was understood." Alicia hurried in with something palliating — she could remember flippancies of her own that had been rebuked — but there was no sign or token of disap- proval in Arnold's face. What she might have observed there, if she had been keen enough in vision, was a slight disarrangement, so to speak, of the placid priestly mask, and something like the original under- graduate looking out from beneath. Hilda began to put on her gloves. The left one gaped at two finger-ends ; she buttoned it with the palm thrown up and outward, as if it were the daintiest spoil of the Avenue de I'Opcra. " Not yet ! " Alicia cried. "Thanks, I must. To-night is our last full rehearsal, and I have to dress the stage for the first act before six o'clock. And, after pulling all that furniture about, I shall want an hour or two in bed." " You ! But it's monstrous. Is there nobody else ? " " I wouldn't let anybody else," Hilda laughed. " Don't forget, please, that we are only strolling players, odds and ends of people, mostly from the Antipodes. Don't confound our manners and customs with anything you've heard about the Lyceum. Good-bye. It has been charming. Good- bye, Mr. Arnold." THE PATH OF A STAR 55 But Alicia held her hand. " The papers say it is to be The Offence of Galilee, after all," she said. "Yes. Hamilton J^radley is all right ag.iin, and we've found a pretty fair local Judas — amateur. We couldn't possibly put it on without Mr. Bradley, lie takes the part of" — Hilda glanced at the hem of the listening priestly robe — "of the chief character, you know." " That was the great Nonconformist success at home last year, wasn't it ? " Arnold asked; "Leslie Patullo's play? I knew him at Oxford. I can't imagine — he's a queer chap to be writing things like that." " It works out better than you — than one might suppose," Hilda returned, moving toward the door. " Some of the situations are really almost novel, in spite of all your centuries of preaching." She sent a disarming smile with that, looking over her shoulder in one of her most effective hesitations, one hand holding back the portiere. " And next week ? " cried Alicia. "Oh, next week we do L Amourette de Giselle — Frank Golding's re-vamp. Good-bye ! Good-bye ! " " I wonder very much what Patullo has done with The Offence of Galilee" Arnold said, after she had gone. " Come and soe, Stephen. We have a box, and there will be heaps of room. It's — suitable, isn't it?" "Oh, quite." " Then dine with us — the Yardleys are coming — and go on. Why not ? " " Thanks very much indeed. It is sure to reward one. I think I shall be able to give myself that pleasure." Arnold made a longer visit than usual ; his cup of 56 THE PATH OF A STAR coffee indeed, became a cup of tea; and his talk, while he stayed, seemed to suffer less from the limitations of his Order than it usually did. He was fluent and direct ; he allowed it to appear that he read niore than his prayers ; that his glance at the world had still a speculation in it; and when he went away, he left Alicia with (lushed cheeks and brightened eyes, murmuring a vague inward corollary upon her "It pays! It pays 1" CHAPTER V MR. LLEWELLYN STAN MOTE'S Company was not the only combination that offered itself to the enttrtainment of Calcutta that December Saturday night. The ever-popular Jimmy hinnigan and his " Surprise Party " — he sailed up the Bay as regularly as the Viceroy descended from the hills — had been advertising '* Side-splitting begins at 9.30. Prices as usual" with reference to this particular evening for a fortnight. In the Athenian Theatre — it had a tin roof and nobody could hear the orchestra when it rained — the Midgets were presenting the earlier collaborations of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan, every Midget guaranteed under nine years of age. Colonel Pike's Great Occidental Circus had been in full blast on the Maidan for a week. It became a great Occidental circus when Colonel Pike married the proprietress. They were both staying at the Grand Oriental Hotel at Singapore when she was made a relict through cholera, and he had more time than he knew what to do with, to say nothing of moustaches that predestined him to a box-office. And certainly circumstances justified the lady's complaisance, for while hitherto hers had been but a fleeting show, it was now, in the excusably imagina- tive terms of Colonel Pike, an architectural feature of the cold weather. There was the Mystic Bower, too, in an octagonal tent under a pipal tree, uliich 57 r. 58 THE PATH OF A STAR <;avc you by an arrangement of lookinj^^-glasses the most unaccountable sensations for one rupee ; and a signboard cried " Know Thyself ! " where a physio- logical display lurked from the eyes of the police behind a perfectly respectable skeleton at one end of J'eri Chandra's Gully. Llewellyn Stanhope saw that there was competition, sighed to think how much, as he stood in the foggy veslibulc of the Imperial Theatre wrapped in the impressive folds of his managerial cape, and pulled his moustache and watched the occasional carriage that rolled his way up the narrow lane from Chowringhee. He thought bitterly, standing there, of Calcutta's recognition of the claims of leL^itimate drama, for the dank darkness was full c>f the noise of wheels and the flashing of lamps on the way to accord anotherseason's welcome to Jimmy Finnigan. *' I might 've learned this town well enough by now," he reflected, "to know that a bally minstrel show's about the size of it." Mr. Stanhope had not Mr. Finnigan's art of the large red lips and the twanging banjo ; his thought was scornful rather than envious. He aspired, moreover, to be known as the pilot of stars, at least in the incipience of their courses, to be taken seriously by association, since nature had arranged that he never could be on his intrinsic merits. His upper lip was too short for that, his yellow moustache too curly, while the perpetual bullying he underwent at the hands of leading ladies gave him an air of deference to every- body else which was sometimes painfully misunder- stood. The stars, it must be said regretfully, in connection with so laudable an ambition, nearly always betrayed him, coming down with an un- mistakably meteoric descent, stony - broke in the uttermost ends of the earth, with a strong inclination to bring the cause of that misfortune before the THE PATH OF A STAR 59 Consular Courts. They seldom succeeded in this design, since Llewellyn was usually able to prove to them in advance that it would be fruitless and expensive, but the paths of ICastern capitals were strewn with his compromises, in Japanese yen, Chinese dollars, Indian rupees, for salaries which no amount of advertising could wheedle into the box-office. When the climax came, Llewellyn usu- ally went to hospital and received the reporters of local papers in pathetic audience there, which counteracted the effect of the astounding statements the stars made in letters to the editor, and yet gave the public clearly to understand that owing to its coldness and neglect a number of ladies and gentle- men of very superior talents were subsisting in their midst mainly upon brinjals and soda-water. " I'm in hospital," Mr. Stanhope would say to the reporters, "and I'm d glad of it," — he always insisted on the oath going in, it appealed so sympathetically to the domiciled Knglishman grown cold to superiority, — "for, upon my soul, I don't know where I'd turn for a crust if I weren't." In the end the talented ladies and gentlemen usually went home by an inexpensive line as the voluntary arrangement of a public to whom plain soda was a ludicrous hardship, and native vegetables an abomination at any price. Then Llewellyn and Rosa Norton — she had a small inalienable income, and they were really married though they preferred for some inexplicable reason to be thought guilty of less conventional behaviour — would depart in another direction, full of gratification for the present and of confidence for the future. Llewellyn usually made a parting statement to the newspapers that although his aims were unalterably high he was not above profiting by experience, and that next season he could be relied upon to hit the In II' I 50 THE PATH OF A STAR taste of the community with precision. This year, as we know, he had made a serious effort by insist- ing that at least a proportion of his ladies and gentle- men should be high kickers and equal to an imitation, good enough for the Orient, of most things done by the illustrious Mr. Chevalier. But the fact that Mr. Stanhope had selected T/ie Offence of Galilee to open with tells its own tale. He was convinced, but not converted, and he stood there with his little legs apart, chewing a straw above the three uncut emeralds that formed the cJiaste decoration of his shirt-front, giving the public of Calcutta one more chance to redeem itself. It began to look as if Calcutta were not wholly irredeemable. A ticca -gharry deposited a sea- captain ; three carriages arrived in succession ; an indefinite number of the Duke's Own, hardly any of them drunk, filed in to the rupee seats under the gallery: an overflow from Jimmy Finnigan, who could no longer give his patrons even standing room. When this occurred Llewellyn turned and swung indifferently away in the direction of the dressing- rooms. When Jimmy Finnigan closed his doors so early there was no further cause for anxiety. Calcutta was abroad and stirring, and would turn for amusement even to The Offence of Galilee. Eventually — that is, five minutes before the curtain rose — the representatives of the leading Calcutta journals decided that they were justified in describing the house as a large and fashionable audience. The Viceroy had taken a box, and sent an Aide-de-Camp to sit in it, also a pair of M.P 's from the North of England, whom he was expected to attend to in Calcutta, and the governess. The Commander-in- Chief had not been solicited to be present, the theatrical season demanding an economy in such THE PATH OF A STAR 6i personalities if they were to go round ; but a Judge of the High Court had a party in the front row, and a Secrctaiy to the Bengal Government sat behind him. To speak of unofiicials, there must have been quite forty lakhs of tea and jute and indigc^ in the house, very ge- ial and prosperous, to say nothing of hides and seeds, and the men who sold money and bought diamonds with the profits, which shone in their wives' hair. A duskiness prevailed in the bare arms and shoulders ; much of the hair was shining anl abundant, and very black. A turn of the head showed a lean Greek profile, an outline bulbous and Armenian, the smooth creamy mask of a Jewess, while here and there glimmered something more opulent and inviting still, which proclaimed, if it did not confess, the remote motherhood of the zenana and the origin of the sun. An audience of fluttering fans and wrinkled shirt collars — the evening was warm under the gas-lights— sensuous, indolent, already amused with itself Not an old woman in it from end to end, hardly a man turned fifty, and those who were had the air and looked to have the habits of twenty-five — an audience that might have got up and stretched itself but for good manners, and walked out in childish borctiom at having to wait for the rise of the curtain, but sat on instead, diffusing an atmos- phere of affluence and delicate scents, and suggesting, with imperious chins, the use of quick orders in a world of personal superiority. Thusthestalls— they were spindling cane-bottomed chairs — and the boxes, in one of which the same spindling cane-bottomcd chairs supported, in more expensive seclusion. Surgeon - Major and Miss Livingstone, the Reverend Stephen Arnold, and two or three other people. The Duke's Own sat under the gallery, cheek by jowl with all the flotsam and I 62 THE PATH OF A STAR jetsam of an Eastern port, well on the look-out for offensive personalities from the men of the ships, and spitting freely. Here, too, was an ease of shoulder and a freedom from the cares of life — at a venture the wives were taking in washing in Brixton, and the children sent to Board School at the expense of the nation. And in a climate like this it was a popular opinion that a man must either enjoy himself or commit suicide. The Sphinx on the crooked curtain looked above and beyond them all. It was a caricature of the Sphinx, but could not confine her gaze. Hilda's audience that nijj^ht knew all about Tin Offence of Galilee from the English illustrated papers. The illustrated papers had a great way of minister- ing to the complacency of Calcutta audiences ; they contained photographs of almost every striking scene, composed at the leisure of the cast, but so vividly supplemented with descriptions of the leading lady's clothes that it hardly required any effort of the imagination to conjure up the rest. The postures and the chief garments of Pilate — he was eating pomegranates when the curtain rose, and listening to scandal from his slave - maidens about Mary Magdalene — were at once recognised in their re- semblance to those of the photographs, and in the thrill of this satisfaction any discrepancies in cut and texture passed generally unobserved. A silent curiosity settled upon the house, half reverent, as if with the Bible names came thronging -^ troop of sacred associations to cluster about personalities brusquely torn out of church, and people listened for familiar sentences with something like the composed gravity with which they heard on Sundays the reading of the second lesson. But as the stage-talk went on, the slave-maidens announcing themselves without delay ^aasrrjs THE PATH OF A STAR 63 comfortably modern and commonplace, and Pilate a cynic and a decadent, though as distinctively from Melbourne, it was possible to note the breaking up of this sentiment. It was plain after all that no standard of ideality was to be maintained or struggled after. The relief was palpable ; nevertheless, when Pilate's wife cast a shrewish gibe at him over the shoulder of her exit, the audience showed but a faint inclination to be amused. It was to be a play evidently like any other play, the same coarse fibre, the same vivid and vulgar appeals. It is doubtful whether this idea was critically present to anyone but Stephen Arnold, but people unconsciously tasted the dramatic substance offered them, and leaned back in their chairs with the usual patient acknow- ledgment that one mustn't expect too much of a company that found it worth while to come to Calcutta. The house grew submissive and stolid, but one could see half-awakened prejudices sitting in the dress-circle. The paper-chasing Secretary said to the most intelligent of his party that on the whole he liked his theology neat, forgetting that the preference belonged to Mr. Andrew Lang in connection with a notable lady novelist ; and the most intelligent — it was Mrs. Barberry — replied that it did seem strange. The depths under the gallery were critically attentive, though Llewellyn Stanhope felt them hostile and longing for verbal brick-bats ; and the Reverend Mr. Arnold shrank into the farthest corner of Surgeon- Major Livingstone's box, and knew all the misery of outrage. Pilate and the slave-maidens, Pilate's fat wife, and an unspeakable comic centuri^Dn, offered as yet hardly more than a prelude, but the monstrosity of the whole performance was already projected upon Arnold's suffering imagination. This, then, was what PatuUo had done with it. 64 THE PATH OF A STAR But what other, he asked himself in quiet anger, could Patullo have been expected to do? the fellow he remembered. Arnold tilted his chair back and stared, with arms folded and sombre brows, at the opposite wall. He looked once at the door, but some spirit of self-torture kept him in his seat. If so much offence could be made with the mere crust and envelope, so to speak, of the sacred story, what sacrilege might not be committed with the divine personalities concerned? He remembered, with the touch of almost physical nausea that assailed him when he saw them, one or two pictures in recent Paris exhibitions where the coveted accent of surprise had been produced by representing the sacred figure in the trivial vionde of the boulevards, and fixed upon them as the source of Patullo's intolerable inspiration. Certain m.uscles felt responsive at the thought of Patullo which Arnold had forgotten he possessed ; it was so seldom that a missionary priest, even of athletic traditions, came in contact with anybody who required to be kicked. Alicia was in front with the Yardleys, dropping her unfailing plummet into the evening's experience. Arnold, hesitating over the rudeness of departure, thought she was sufficiently absorbed ; she would hardly mind. The centurion slapped his tin armour, and made a jest, which reached Stephen over his hostess's shoulder, and seemed to brand him where he sat. He looked about for his hat and some excuse that would serve, and while he looked the sound of applause rose from the house. It was a demonstra- tion without great energy, hardly more than a flutter from stall to stall, with a vague, fundamental noise from the gallery ; but it had the quality which acclaimed something new. Arnold glanced at the stage, and saw that while Pilate and the hollow- THE PATH OF A STAR 65 chested slaves and the tin centurion were still on, they had somehow lost significance and colour, and that all the meaning and the dominance of the situation had gathered into the person of a woman of the East who danced. She was almost discordant in her literalness, in her clear olive tints and the kol smudges under her eyes, the string of coins in the mass of her fallen hair, and her unfettered body. Beside her the slave-girls, crouching, looked like painted shells. She danced before Pilate in strange Eastern ways, in plastic weavings and gesturings that seemed to be the telling of a tale ; and from the orchestra only one unknown instrument sobbed out to help her. The women of the people have ever bought in Palestine, buy to-day in the Mousky, the coarse, thick grey-blue cotton that fell about her limbs, and there was audacity in the poverty of her beaten silver anklets and armlets. These shone and twinkled with her movements ; but her softly splendid eyes and reddened lips had the immobility of the bazar. People looked at their playbills to see whether it was really Hilda Howe or some nautch- queen borrowed from a native theatre. By the time she sank before Pilate and placed his foot upon her head a new spirit had breathed upon the house, i Under the unexpectedness of the representation it sat up straight, and there was a keenness of desire to see what would happen next which plainly curtailed the applause, as it does with children at a pantomime. " Have you ever seen anything like it before ? " Alicia asked Captain Yardley ; and he said he thought he had once, in Algiers, but not nearly zo well done. Arnold rose again to go, but the Magdalene had begun the well-known passage with Pilate, about which the newspapers absurdly reported later that if Miss Howe had not been a Protestant, S 66 THE PATH OF A STAR and so impervious the Pope would have excom- municated her, and as he looked his movement imperceptibly changed to afford him a better place. He put an undecided hand upon a prop of the box that rose behind Alicia's shoulder, and so stood leaning and looking, more conspicuous in the straight lines and short shoulder -cape of the frock of his Order than he knew. Hilda, in one of those im- ])cnetrable regards which she threw straight in front of her, while Pilate yawned and pos.d nearer and nearer the desire of the Magdalene to be admitted to his household, was at once aware of him. Presently he sat down again — it was still the profane, the fabulous, the horrible Patullo, but a strain of pure gold had come into the fabric worth holding in view, impossible, indeed, to close the eyes upon. Far enough it was from any semblance to historical fact, but almost possible, almost admissible, in the form of the woman, as historical fiction. She dared to sit upon the floor now, in the ungraceful huddled Eastern fashion, clasping her knees to her breast, with her back half turned to her lord, the friend of Caisar, so that he could not see the design that sat behind the mask of her sharp indifference. She rested her chin upon her knees, and let theblankness of her beauty exclaim upon the subtlety of her replies, plainly mccisuring the power of her provocation against the impoverished quality that camp and grove, court and schools, might leave upon august Roman sensi- bilities. It was the old, old sophistication, so perfect in its concentration behind the /W-brushed eyes and the brown breasts, the igniting, flickering, raging of an instinct upon the stage. Alicia, when it was over, said to Mrs. Yardley, " How the modern woman goes off upon side issues ! " to which that lady nodded a rather suspicious assent. THE PATH OF A STAR 67 Long before Hilda had begun to act for Arnold, to play to his special consciousness, he was fastened to his chair, held down, so to speak, by a whirlpool of conflicting impulses. She did so much more than "lift "the inventive vulgarisation of the Ijible story in the common sense ; she inspired and transfused it so that whenever she appeared pec^ple irresistibly forgot the matter for her, or made private acknow- ledtrments to the effect that something was to be said even for an impious fantasy which gave her so unique an opportunity. To Arnold her vivid embodi- ment of an incident in that which was his morning and evening meditation made special appeal, and though it was in a way as if she had thrust her heathen torch into his Holy of Holies, he saw it lighted with fascination, and could not close the door upon her. The moment of her discovery of this came early, and it is only she, perhaps, who could tell how the strange bond wove itself that drew her being — the Magdalene's — to the priest who sat behind a lady in swansdown and chiffon in the upper box nearest to the stage on the right. The beginnings of such things are untraceable, but the fact may be considered in connection with this one that Hamilton Bradley, who represented, as we have been told he would, the Chief Character, did it upon lines very recognisably those of the illustrations of sacred books, very correct as to the hair and beard and pictured garment of the Galilean ; with every accent of hollow-eyed pallor and inscrutable remote- ness, with all the thin vagueness, too, of a popular engraving, the limitations and the depression. Under it one saw the painful inconsistency of the familiar Hamilton Bradley of other presentations, and realised with irritation, which must have been tenfold in Hilda, how he rebelled against the part. Perhaps 68 THE PATH OF A STAR this was enough in itself to send her dramatic impulse to another focus, and the strangeness of the adven- ture was a very thing she would delight in. What- ever may be said about it, while yet the shock of the woman's earthly passion with its divine object was receding from Arnold's mind before the exquisite charm and faithfulness of the worshipping Magdalene, he became aware that in some special way he sat judging and pitying her. She had hardly lifted her eyes to him twice, yet it was he, intimately he, who responded as if from afar off, to the touch of her infinite solicitude and abasement, the joy and the shame of her love. As he watched and knew, his lips tightened and his face paled with the throb of his own renunciation, he folded his celibate arms in the habit of his brotherhood, and was caught up into a knowledge and an imitation of how the spotless Original would have looked upon a woman suffering and triinsported thus. The poverty of the play faded out ; he became almost unaware of the pinchbeck and the fustian of Patullo's invention, and its insufferable mixture with the fabric of which every thread was precious beyond imagination. He looked down with tender patience and compassion upon the development of the woman's intrigue in the palace, through the very flower of her crafts and guiles, to save Him who had transfigured her from the hands of the rabble and the high priests ; he did not even shrink from the inexpressibly grating note of the purified Magdalene's final passionate tendering of her personal sacrifice to the enamoured Pilate as the price of His freedom, and when at the last she wept at His feet where He lay bound and delivered, and wrapped them, in the agony of her abandonment, in the hair of her head, the priest's lips almost moved in words other than those of the playwright — words that told ulse /cn- hat- the was site ine, sat her /ho her the his of in ito iSS ng ed id •le as th nt le n le k d il s t i r ', TAN YfiC NOT HK PII.KNT ? " THE PATH OF A STAR 69 her he knew the height and the dcjDth of her sacrifice and forgave it, " Neither do I condemn thee . . ." In his exultation he saw what it was to perform miracles, to remit sins. The spark of divinity that was in him glowed to a white heat ; the woman on the stage warmed her hands at it in two conscious- nesses. She was stirred through all her artistic sense in a new and delicious way, and wakened in some dormant part of her to a knowledge beautiful and surprising. She felt in every ner\c the exquisite quality of that which lay between them, and it thrilled her through all her own perception of what she did, and all the applause at how she did it. It was as if he, the priest, was borne out upon a deep broad current that made toward solar spaces, toward infinite bounds, and as if she, the actress, piloted him. . . . The Sphinx on the curtain — it had gone down in the old crooked lines — a^ain looked above and beyond them all. I have sometimes fancied a trace of malignancy about her steady eyeballs, but perhaps that is the accident or the design of the scene- painter ; it docs not show in photographs. The audience was dispersing a trifle sedately ; the per- formance had been, as Mrs. Barberry told Mr. Justice Home, interesting but depressing. 'T hope," said Alicia to Stephen, fastening the fluffy-white collar of the wrap he put round her, " that I needn't be sorry I asked you to come. I don't quite know. But she did redeem it, didn't she ? That last scene " "Can you not be silent?" Arnold said, almost in a whisper ; and her look of astonishment showed her that there were tears in his ej'es. He left the theatre and walked light-headedly across Chowringhee and out into the starlit empty darkness of the Maidan, h I 7° THE PATH OF A STAR where presently he sfumM j his amazement, and I e .v n^J"- ''''''''' '^^*" "P"" or two, while the b ecve L o ?'""""^ ^"' "" '"'"r t>e river and the mast-head ImT' """ S'ass f,om reachcl ,he Mission 'Lt^r'Ti"' '""' "''^'•" he- servant ivas surprised at H,» ''"-'■ ^"'"^"^ ''is , necessary rebuki """='"='' ''■'"^"•"" of a ! I ich ion )iir )m cJc ho lis ' a CHAPTER VI WHILE Alicia Livingstone fought with her imagination in accounting for Limlsay's absence from the theatre on the first niglu of a notable presentation by Miss Hilda Howe, he sat with his knees crossed on the bench farthest back and the corner obscurest of the Salvation Army Headquarters in Bentinck Street. It had become his accustomed place ; sitting there he had begun to feel like the adventurer under Niagara, it was the only spot from v/hich he could observe, try to under- stand and cope with the torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm of his kneeling Laura, in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and the sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away. His persistent refusal of a better place also profited him in that it brought to Ensign Sand and the other "officers" the divination that he was one of those shyly anxious souls who have to be enticed into the Kingdom of Heaven with wariness, and they made a great pretence of not noticing him, going on with the exercises just as if he were not there, a consideration which he was able richly to enhance when the plate came round. After his first contribution, Mrs. Sand regarded his spiritual interests with almost superstitious reverence, according them the fullest privacy of which she was capable. The gravity which the gentleman attached 71 'I I I'll i '' ■■ I i I I I ' 72 THK I'ATH OF A STAR "amount" MrTsnnW ■"■""^^'^''tly testified bv th. '"- the :-.,;!; in"'^",'^,^-- -anted better evSene f"'m h,m in her I raye • ' '"''"f^^ ^ ''old away very occasional -,1 ,,2 '' '-'•^'lortations • onlv n gathered and set lil-l n ' '"-'" ""-X fell, he consciousness, to vi it and"'""'-; '" '"'' '-"'-'- t =un „.ent down and hi twentv f " ,"'"'" ■■""'<^'- the not see her a^ain ,,' '^T^"'y-'oiir hours he »omI,i -■^ her face; li^L-^ U^ ^ll'Zl'"",^"' "■'"•" ^"' I mean, least of all in tlip mi i''^>' ''""■eel hin, Af.cr the first quarter of arho'Ifr'' -f -"^^'^ '"f-"'"' ' Lindsay suffered no more nnnr°h ' "• " '° •"= ^arcd, o em„t,onal hypnotism lTe'^^e'!°"i °" ""= »core plainly enough, and There 'nr'^"^^ '^'^ ^'t"'-ine at about sc on — if you arc sure you won't be too exhausted to have me after such a day." He saw that her lids as she raised them to answer were slightly reddened ?X the edges, testifying to the acridity of Calcutta's road dust, and a dry crack crept into the silver voice with which she said matter-of-factly, ** W^e are never too exhausted to attend to our Master's business." Lindsay's face expressed an instant's hesitation ; he looked gravely the other way. ** And the address? " he said. "i'Ximost next door — we all live within bugle-call. The entrance is in Crooked Lane. An)'body will tell you." At the door ICnsign Sand was conspicuously wait- ( I! i I 'i !l ! 74 THK PATH OF A STAR ■ng- Lindsay said " Th.inl-.. " . • ■^he seemed to be liold m, if f^T'' '"'"'' P^'^'^'^J °"t- ^^ay o^-er the gutter, to th/? '"'"-'»"d picked hi, ?Pl>o.site. From the e he w-Tt IT ,"^ '^'''^ Chinamln ■'^sue forth and turn Into c'„r/''r" ''"'^ "^""^Pany entrance was. It gave I L'''' ^^"''"'^' ^»'here the part in this squalor^which Ls ".T", "^"' '^"^ ''«^l ^er ful m that it also iocahsed h ■ ^^'?S^'^'^' distress- habitable world, and iSl f '" ,'^^ ''""'• >'Vinsj, and attainable. Then he wen° 1"''^^ ^'' *''"' ou may trap her in her corner under the Throne. The place was divided by a calico curtain, over which plainly showed the top of a mosquito curtain — she slept in there. On the walls were all tender texts about loving and believing and bearing others' burdens,interspersed with photographs, mostly of women with plain features and enthusiastic eyes, dressed in some strnn^j^c costi'me of the Army ^tmmmfmi'^* THK PATH OF A S'lAR n ■u i 4 in Madras, Ceylon, China. A litllc wooden table stood against the wall holdini^ an album, a Bible and h\'nin-b(!i»ks, a work-basket and an irrelevant Ja})anese doll which seemed to stretch its absurd arms straight out in a j^a\' litlle ineffectual heathen protest. There was another more embarrassing table : it had a coarse cloth ; and was garnished with a loaf and butter-dish, a plate of plantains and a tin of marmalade, knives and teacups for a meal evidentl)' impending, it was atrociously, sordidly intimate, with its core in Harris, who when Miss I^'ilbcrt had well gone from the room looked up. " If you're here on pri\ ate business," he said to Lindsay, fixing his eyes, however, on a point awkwardly to the left of him, *' maybe you ciin't aware that the Ensign " — he threw his head back in the direction of the next room — " is the person to appl\' to. She's in command here. Captain I'^ilbert's only under her." " Indeed ? " said Lindsay. " Thanks." " It ain't like it is in the Queen's army," Harris volunteered, still searching Lindsay's vicinity for a point upon which his eyes could permanently rest, " where, if you remember, Ensigns are the smallest officer we have." " The commission is, I think, abolished," replied Lindsay, governing a deep and irritated frown. " Maybe so. This Army don'^ pretend to pattern very close on the other — not in discipline anyhow," said Mr. Harris with ambiguity. "But you'll find iMisign Sand very willing to do anything she can for you. She's a hard-working officer." A sharp wail smote the air from a point c' e to the lath and canvas partition, on the ..or side, followed by hasty bushings and steps in the opposite direction. It enabled Lindsay to observe that Mrs. Sand seemed at present to be sufficiently •11! 78 THE PATH OF A STAR I i M engaged, at which Mr. Harris shifted one heavy hmb over the other, and lapsed into silence, looking sternly at an advertisement. The air was full of their mutual annoyance, although Duff tried to feel amused. They were raging as primitively, under the red flannel shirt and the tan-coloured waistcoat with white silk spots, as two cave-men on an T^arly Ikitish coast ; their only sophistication lay in Harris's newspaper and Lindsay's idea that he ought to find this person humorous. Then Laura came back and resolved the situation. " Here it is," she said, handing the volume to Mr. Harris; "we have all enjoyed it. Thank you very much." There was in it the oddest mixture of the supreme feminine and the superior officer. Harris, as he took the book, had no alternative. " Good-evening, then, Captain," said he, and went, stumbling at the door. ** Mr. Harris," said Laura equably, " found salvation about a month ago. He is a very steady young man — foreman in one of the carriage works here. He is now struggling with the tobacco hibit, and he often drops in in the evening." " He seems to be a — a member of the corps," said Lindsay. " He would be, only for the carriage works. He says he doesn't find himself strong enough in grace to give up his situation yet. But he wears the uniform at the meetings to show his sympathy, and the Ensign doesn't think there's any objection." Laura was sitting straight up in one of the cheap httle chairs, her sa?'i drawn over her head, her hands folded in her lap. The native dress clung to her limbs in sculpturable lines, and her consecrated ambitions seemed more insistent than ever. She had nothing to do with anything else, nothing to do with THE PATH OF A STAR 79 her room or its arrangements, nothing, Lindsay felt profoiindly, to do with him. Her personal zeal for him seemed to resolve itself, at the point of contact, into something disappointingly thin ; he saw that she counted with him altogether as a unit in a glorious total, and that he himself had no place in her knowledge or her desire. This brought him, witli something like a shock, to a sense of how far he had depended on her interest for his soul's sake to introduce her to a wider view of him. *' But you have come to tell me about yourself," she said, suddenly it seemed to Lindsay, who was wrapped in the contemplation of her profile. " Well, is there any special stumbling-block ? " " There are some things I should certainly like you to know," replied Lindsay ; " but you can't think how difficult " he glanced at the lath and plaster partition, but she to whom publicity was a condition salutary, if not essential, to spiritual experience, naturally had no interpretation for that. " I know it's sometimes hard to speak," she said ; " Satan ties our tongues." The misunderstanding was absurd, but he saw only its difficulties, knitting his brows. '* I fear you will find my story very strange and very mad," he said. " I cannoc be sure that you will even listen to it." " Oh," Laura said simply, " do not be afraid ! 1 have heard confessions ! I work at home, you see, a good deal among the hospitals, and — we do not shrink, you know, in the Army, from things like that." "Good God!" he exclaimed, staring, "you don't think — you don't suppose " " Ah ! don't say that 1 It's .so like swearing." As he sat in helpless anger, trying to formulate 8o TIIK PATH OF A STAR something intelH<^ible, the curt.iin parted, and a sallow little Eurasian girl of eii;liteen, also in the dress of the Arm}', came throu<;h from the bedroom part. She smiled in a conscious, mcanini^dess way, as she sidled past them. At the door her smile broadened, and as she closed it after her she gave them a little nod. "That's my lieutenant," said Laura. " The place is like a warren," Lindsay groaned. " How can we talk here? " Laura lof^ked at him gravely, as one making a diagnosis. " Do you think," she said, " a word of prayer would help you ? " " No," said Lindsay. " No, thank >'ou. What is making me miserable," he added (|uietly, "is the knowledge that we are being overheard. If you go into the next room, I am quite certain you will find Mrs. Sand listening by the wall." "She's gone out! She and the Captain and INliss l)e Souza, to take the evening meeting. Nobody is in there except the two children, and they are asleep." Her smile, he thought, made a Madonna of her, " Indeed, we are quite alone, you and I, in the flat now. So please don't be afraid, Mr. Lindsay! Say wdiatever is in your heart, and the mere saying " " Oh," Lindsay cried, " stop ! Don't, for Heaven's sake, look at me in that light any longer. I'm not penitent. I'm not — what do you call it? — a soul under conviction. Nothing of the sort." He waited with consideratcness for this to have its effect upon her ; he could not go on until he saw her emerge, gasping, from the inundation of it. But she was not even staggered by it. She only looked down at her folded hands with an added seriousness and a touch of sorrow. "Aren't you?" she said. "But at least you feel .:Ji THK PATH OF A STAR 8i th;it you ought to be. I thought it had been a complished. lUit I will go on praying." "Shall you be very angry if I tell you that I'd rather you didn't? ! want to come into your life differently — sincerely." She looked at him with such ab.solute blankness that his resolution was swiftly overturned, and showed him a different face. " I won't tell you anything about what I feci and what I want to-night except thi.s — I find that you are influencing all my thoughts and all my days in what is to me a very new and a very happy way. \'ou hear as much as that often, and from many people, don't you? So there is nothing in it that need startle you or make you uncomfortable." He pau.sed, and she nodded in a visible effort to follow him. " So I am here to-night to ask you to 'et me do soirethiiig for you just for my own plea^ure — there must be some way of helping you, and being your friend " "As Mr. Harris is," she intcrrui)tt d. "I do influence Mr. Harris for good, I know. He says so.'* " Influence me," he begged, "in any way you like." " I will pray for you," she said. " I promise that." "And you will let me see you sometimes?" he asked, conceding the point. " If I thought it would do you any good" — she looked at him doubtlully, clasping and unclasping her hands ; " I will see ; I will ask for guidance. Perhaps it is one of His own appointed ways. If you have no objection, I will give you this little book. Almost Persuaded. I am sure you are almost persuaded. Above all, I hope you will go on coming to the meetings." And in the course of the next two or three moments 6 I li! 82 THE PATH OF A STAR a« Mr. Harris had bee^ b* H,?'*'' ''''""'■''■'"' ''•^'■'^"y volume. Only in hfs c^U . fi '"^""7 °^ ^ P'''"^<^^i beauty .stood at the to^ Lr v^""" °^ "'"<^h angelic 'amp high, to niumlne "^.'i, w::^" A P'""?"' '<~c looking back lest she "hon Irl 17' ''\'-=fr'-'ined from '•n his face, and vanfsh Ic" vinThf'"'''' "^ '"° '"""a" would be indeed impenetrawf '" '^"^"^'' ^^^ich I ! I. :lly ted om lan ich CHAPTER VII 1 THERE was a panic in Dhuriumtolla ; a "ticca- ghany" — the shabby oblong box on wheels, dignified in municipal regulations as a hackney carriage — was running away. Coolie motlicrs dragged naked children up on the pavement with angry screams ; drivers of ox-carts dug their lean beasts in tlie side, and turned out of the way almost at a trot ; only the tram-car held on its course in conscious invincibility. A pariah tore along beside the vehicle barking ; crows flew up from the rubbish heaps in the road by half-dozens, protesting shrilly ; a pedlar of blue bead necklaces just escaped being knocked down. Little groups of native clerks and money-lenders stood looking after, laughing and speculating ; a native policeman, staring also, gave them sharp orders to disperse, and they said to him, " Peace, brother." To each other they said, " Behold, the driver is a ' mut-wallah"* (or drunken person); and presently, as the thing whirled farther up the emptied perspective," Lo ! the syce has fallen." The driver was certainly very drunk ; his whip circled perpetually above his head ; the syce clinging behind was stiff with terror, and fell off like a bundle of rags. Inside, Hilda Howe, with a hand in the strap at each side and her feet against the opposite scat, swayed violently and waited for what might happen, breath- 83 ill 84 THE PATH OF A STAR ih ing short. Whenever the gharr}' thrashed over the tram-lines, she closed her eyes. There was a point near Cornwallis Street where she saw the off front wheel make sickeningly queer revolutions ; and another, electrically close, when two tossing roan heads v/ith pink noses appeared in a gate to the left, heading smartly out, all unawares, at precisely right angles to her own derelict equipage. That was the juncture of the Reverend Stephen Arnold's interfer- ence, walking and discussing with Amiruddin Khan, as he was, the comparative benefits of Catholic and Mohammedan fasting. It would be easy to magnify what Stephen did in that interruption of the con- siderate hearing he was giving to Amiruddin. The ticca - gharry ponies were almost spent, and any resolute hand could have impelled them away from the carriage-pole with which the roans threatened to impale their wretched sides. The front wheel, h • ever, made him heroic, going off at a tangent into a cloth - merchant's shop, and precipitating a crash while he still clung to me reins. The door flew open on the under side, and Hilda fell through, grasping at the dust of the road ; while the driver, discovering that his seat was no longer horizontal, entered suddenly upon sobriety, and clamoured with tears that the cloth - merchant should restore his wheel — was he not a poor man? Hilda, struggling with her hat-pins, felt her dress brushed by various lean hands of the bazar, and observed herself the central figure in yet another situation. When she was in a condition to see, she saw Arnold soothing the ponies ; Amiruddin, before the vague possibility of police complication having slipped away. Stephen had believed the gharry empty. The sight of her, in her disordered draperies, was a revelation and a reproach. THE PATH OF A STAR Rs " Is it possible ! " he exclaimed, and was beside her. "You arc not hurt?" " Only scraped, thanks. I am lucky to get off with this." She held up her right palm, broadly abraded round the base, where her hand had struck the road. Arnold took it delicately in his own thin fingers to examine it ; an infinity of contrast rested in the touch. He looked at it with anxiety so obviously deep and troubled, that Hilda silently smiled. She who had been battered, as she said, twice round the world, found it disproportionate. " It's the merest scratch," she said, grave again to meet his glance. " Indeed, I fear not." The priest made a solicitous bandage with his handkerchief, while the circle about them solidified. " It is quite unpleasantly deep. You must let me take you at once to the nearest chemist's and get it properly washed and dressed, or it may give you a vast amount of trouble — but I am walking." " I will walk too," Hilda said readily. " I should prefer it, truly." With her undamaged hand she produced a rupee from her pocket, where a few coins chinked casually, looked at it, and groped for another. " I really can't afford any more," she said. " He can get his wheel mended with that, can't he? " " It is three times his fare," Arnold said austerely, "and he deserved nothing — but a fine, perhaps." The man was suppliant before them, cringing, salaaming, holding joined palms open. Hilda lifted her head and looked over the shoulders of the little rabble, where the sun stood golden upon the roadside and two naked children played with a torn pink kite. Something seemed to gather into her eyes as she looked, and when she fixed them softly upon Arnold, to speak, as it had spoken before. I|!| 86 THE PATH OF A STAR j 1 1 1 -I I I I I " Ah," she said. " Our deserts." It was the merest echo, and she had done it on purpose, but he could not know that, and as she dropped the rupees into the craving hands, and turned and walked away with him, he was held in a frightened silence. There was nothing perhaps that he wanted to talk of more than of his experience at the theatre ; he longed to have it simplified and explained ; yet in that space of her two words the impossibility of mentioning it had sprung at him ap. I overcome him. He hoped, with instant fervour, that she would refrain from any allusion to T/ie Offence of Galilee. And for the time being she did refrain. She said, instead, that her hand was smarting absurdly already, and did Arnold suppose the chemist would use a carbolic lotion ? Stephen, with a guarded look, said very possibly not, but one never knew ; and Hilda, thinking of the far-off day when the little girl of her was brought tactfully to disagree- able necessities, covered a preposterous impulse to cry with another smile. A thudding of bare feet overtook them. It was tile syce, with his arms full of thin paper bags, the kind that hold cheap millinery. "Oh, the good man ! " Hilda exclaimed. " My parcels ! " and looked on equably, while Arnold took them by their puckered ends. " I have been buying gold lace and things from Chundcr Dutt for a costume," she explained. The bags dangled helplessly from Arnold's fingers ; he looked very much aware of them. " Let me carry at least one," she begged. " I can perfectly with my parasol hand ; " but he refused her even one. "If I may be permitted to take the responsi- bility," he said happily, and she rejoined, *' Oh, I would trust you with things more fragile." At which, such is the discipline of these Orders, he THE PATH OF A STAR 87 looked steadily in front of him, and seamed deaf with modesty. "But are you sure," said Hilda, suddenly con- siderate, " that it looks well ? " " Is the gold lace then so very meretricious?" " It goes doubtfully with your cloth," she laughed, and instantly looked stricken with the conviction that she might better ' have said something else. But Arnold appeared to take it simply and to see no gibe in it, only a pleasant commonplace. " It might look qu. er in Chowringhee," he said, "but this is not a censorious public." Then, as if to palliate the word, he added, " They will think me no more mad to carry paper bags than to carry myself, when it is plain that I might ride — and they see me doing that every day." All the same the paper bags swinging beside the gi'-dled black skirt did impart a touch of comedy, which was in a way a pity, since humour goes so tar to destroy the picturesque. Hilda without the paper bags would have been vastly enough for contrast. She walked — one is inclined to dwell upon her steps and face the risk of being unintelligible — in a wide- sleeved gown of peach-coloured silk, rather frayed at the seams, a trifle spent in vulnerable places, sur- mounted by an extravagant collar and a Paris hat. The dress was of artistic intention inexpensively carried out, the hat had an accomplished c}iic\ it had fallen to her in the wreck and ruin of a too ambitious draper of Coolgardie. As a matter of fact it was the only one she had. The wide sleeves ended a little below the elbow, and she carried in compensation a pair of long suede gloves, a compromise which only occasionally discovered itself buttonless, and a most expensive umbrella, the tribute of a gentleman in that line of business in Cape Town, whose standing iJ: 88 THE PATH OF A STAR I!- ! I , i i I advertisement is now her note of appreciation. Arnold in his unvarying t^ait paced beside her ; he naturally shrank, so close to her opulence, into some- thing less impressive than he was ; a mere intelligence he looked, in a quaint uniform, with his long lip drawn down and pursed a little in this accomplishment of duty, and his eyes steadily in front of him. Hilda's lambent observation was everywhere, but most of all on him ; a fleck of the dust from the road still lay upon the warm bloom of her cheek, a perpetual happy curve clung about her mouth. So they pas.-.ed in streets of the thronging people, where yards of new- dyed cotton, purple and yellow, stretched drying in the sun, where a busy tom-tom called the pious to leave coppers before a blood - red, golden -tongued Kali, half visible through the door of a mud hut — where all the dealers in brass dishes and glass arndets and silver-gilt stands for the comfortable hubble- bubble, squatted in line upon their thresholds and accepted them with indifference. So thicy passed, worthy of a glance from that divinity who shapes our ends. They talked of the accident. " You stopped the horses, didn't you?" Hilda said, and the speculation in her eyes was concerned with the extent to which a muscular system might dwindle, in that climate, under sacerdotal robes worn every day. " I told them to stop, poor things," Arnold said ; " they had hardly to be persuaded." " Hut you didn't save my life or anything like that, did you?" she adventured like a vagrant in the sun. The blood was warm in her. She did not weigh her words. " I shouldn't like having my life saved. The necessity for feeling such a vast emotion — I shouldn't know ho V to cope with it." " I will claim to have saved your other hand," he H L L THE PATH OF A STAR S9 sinilcd. '* V(3U will be (juitc i;ratcful eiioiii;h fur that." She noted that lie did not hasten, behind blushes, into the slicker of a general disavowal. '1 he cassock seemed to cover an obligation to acknowledL;e things. ** I see," she said, veering n^und. "Ifcu are quite right to circumscribe me. Ihcre is nothing so boring as the gratitude that will out. It is only the absence of it, too plainly expressed, that is unpleasant, l^ut you won't find that in me either." She gave him a smile as she lowered her parasol to turn into the shop of Lahiri Dey, licensed to sell European drugs, that promised infinite possibilities of friendship ; and he, following, took pleased and careful possession of it. An hour later, as they approached Number Three, Lai Behari's Lane, Miss Howe looked pale, which is not surprising since they had walked and talked all the way. Their talk was a little strenuous too; it was as if they had fallen upon an opportunity, and, mutu- ally, consciously made the most of it. "You must have some tea immediately," Arnold said, before the battered urns and the dusty crotons of her dwelling. " A little whisky and soda, I think. And you will come up, please, and have some too. You must." "Thanks," he said, looking at his watch. "If I do " " You'll have the soda without the whisky ! All right! " she laughed, and led the way. *' This is vicious indulgence," Arnold said of his beverage, sitting under the inverted Japanese um- brellas. " I haven't been pitched out of a ticca- gharry." It is doubtful whether the indulgence was altogether in the soda, which is, after all, ascetic in its quality, 90 THE PAIH OF A STAR and only suitably effervescent, like ecclesiastical humour. It may very probably be that there was no indulgence; indeed, one is convinced that the word, like so many words, says too much. The springs of Arnold's chair were bursting through the bottom, and there were stains on its faded chintz- arms, but if was comfortable, and he leaned back in it, looking up at the paper umbrellas. You know the room ; I took you into it with Duff Lindsay, who did not come there from rigidities and rituals, and who had a qualified pleasure in it. But there were lines in the folds of the flowered window-curtains dragging half a yard upon the floor, which seemed to disband Arnold's spirit, and a twinkle in the blue bead of a bamboo screen where the light came through that released it altogether. The shabby violent- coloured place encompassed him like an easy gar- ment, and the lady with her feet tucked up on a sofa and a cushion under her tumbled head, was an unembarrassing invitation to the kind of happy things he had not said for years. They sat in the coolness of the room for half an hour, and then, after a little pause, Hilda said suddenly — " I am glad you saw me in The Offence of Galilee on Saturday night. We shall not play it again." "It has been withdrawn ? " "Yes. The rights, you know, really belong to Mr. Bradley ; and he can't endure his part." " Is there no one else to " " He objects to anyone else. We generally play together." This was inadvertent, but Stephen had no reason to imagine that she contracted her eyebrows in any pecial irritation. " It is an atrocious piece," she adued. " Is it?" he said absently, and then, "Yes, it is an atrocious piece. But I am glad, too, that I saw you." THE PATH OF A STAR 91 He looked away from her, reddening deeply, and stood up. lie bade her a measured and precise fare- well. It seemed as if he hurried. She only half rose to give him her unwounded hand, and when he was gone she sank back again thoughtfully. |ii:h! CHAPTER VIII "i " T HAVE outstayed all the rest," Lindsay said, 1 with his hat and sticlv in his hand, in Alicia Livingstone's drawing-room, "because I want par- ticularly to talk to you. They have left me precious little time," he added, glancing at his watch. She had wondered when he came, early in the formal Sunday noon hour for men's calls, since he had more casual privileges ; and wondered more when he sat on with composure, as one who is master of the situation, while Major-Generals and Deputy-Secretaries came and went. There was a mist in her brain as she talked to the Major-Generals and Deputy-Secretaries — it did not in the least obscure what she found to say — and in the midst of it the formless idea that he must wish to attach a special importance to his visit. This took shape and line when they were alone, and he spoke of out-sitting the others. It impelled her to walk to the window and open it. " You might stay to lunch," she said, addressing a pair of crows in altercation on the verandah. "There is nearly half an hour before lunch," he said. " Can I convince you in that time, I wonder, that I'm not an absolute fool ?" Alicia turned and came back to her sofa. She may have had a prevision of the need of support. " I hardly think," she said, drawing the long breath with 92 TIIR Py\TII OV A STAR 93 he er, ith which we try to subchic a tempest within, "that it would take so long." She looked with careful criti- cism at the violets in his buttonhole. "I've had a supreme experience," he said, "very strange and very lovely. I am living in it, moving in it, speaking in it," he added quickly, watching he^ face ; "so don't, for Heaven's sake, touch it roughly." She lifted her hand in nervous, involuntary depreca- tion. " Why should you suppose I would touch it roughly?" There was that in her voice which cried out that she would rather not touch it at all ; but Lindsay, on the brink of his confidence, could not suppose it, did not hear it. He knew her so well. " A great many people will," he said. " I can't bear the thought of their fingers. That is one reason that brings me to you." She faced him fully at this ; her eyelids quivered, but she looked straight at him. It nerved her to ije brought into his equation, even in the form which should finally be eliminated. She contrived a smile. " 1 believe you know already," Lindsay cried. " I have heard sometliing. Don't be alarmed — not from people, from Miss Howe." " Wonderful woman ! I haven't told her." "Is that always necessary? She has intuitions. In this case," Alicia went on, with immense courage, " I didn't believe them." "Why?" he asked enjoyingly. Anything to handle his delight — he would even submit it to analysis. She hesitated — her business was in great waters, the next instant might engulf her. " It's so curiously unlike you," she faltered. " If she had been a duchess — a very exquisite person, or somebody very clever — remember I haven't seen her." 94 THE PATH OF A STAR iv 1(1- I I! "You haven't, no I must for<;ivc you invidious comparisons." Lindsay visaged the words with a smile, but they had an articulated hardness. Alicia raised her eyebrows. " What do you expect one to imagine?" she asked, with quietness. " A miracle," he said sombrely. " Ah, that's difficult ! " There was silence for a moment between them, then she added perversely — *' And, you know, faith is not what it was." Duff sat biting his lips. Her dryness irritated him. He was accustomed to find in her fields of delicately blooming enthusiasms, and running watercourses where his satisfactions were ever reficcted. Suddenly she seemed to emerge to her own consciousness, upon a summit from which she could look down upon the turmoil in herself and beyond it, to where he stood. " Don't make a mistake," she said. " Don't." She thrust her hand for a fraction of an instant toward him, and then swiftly withdrew it, gathering herself together to meet what he might say. What he did say was simple, and easy to hear. " That's what everybody will tell me ; but I thought you might understand." He tapped the toe of his boot with his stick as if he counted the strokes. She looked down and counted them too. " Then )'ou won't help me to marry her?" he said, definitely, at last. "What could I do?" She twisted her sapphire ring. " Ask somebody else." *' Don't expect me to believe there is nothing you could do. Go to her as my friend. It isn't such a monstrous thing to ask. Tell her any good you know of me. At present her imagination paints me in all the lurid colours of the lost." THi: PATH OF A STAR 95 The face she turned upon him was all little sharp white angles, and the cloud of fair hair above her temples stood out stiflly, suc,^gestin(,r Celine and the curling tongs. She did not lose her elegance; the poise of her chin and shoulders was cjuite perfect, but he thought she looked too amusedly at his difficulty. ller negative, too, was more unsym- pathetic than he had any reason to expect. ** No," she said. *' It must be somebody else. Don't ask me. I should become inv(jlved — I might do harm." She had surmounted her emcjtion ; she was able to look at the matter with surprising clearness and decision. " I should do harm," she repeated. '* You don't count with her effect on you." "You can't possibly imagine her effect on me. I'm not a man." " But won't you take anything — aljout her — from me? You know I'm really not a fool — not even very impressionable." " Oh no ! " she said impatiently. " No — of course not." "Pray why?" "There are other things to reckon with." She looked coldly beyond him out of the window. " A man's intelligence when he is in love — how far can one count on it?" There was nothing but silence for that, or perhaps the murmured, "Oh, I don't agree," with which Lindsay met it. He rode down her logic with a simple appeal. "Then after all," he said, "you're not my friend." It goaded her into something like an impertinence. "After you have murried her," she said, "you'll see." " You will be hers then," he declared. " I will be yours." Her eyes leaped along the i I III 'I iii' Ip'- !• ' m 96 THE PATH OF A STAR prospect and rested on a brass-studded Tartar shield at the other end of the room. "And I thought you broad in these views," Lindsay- said, glancing at her curiously. Her opportunity for defence was curtailed by a heavy step in the hall, and the lifted portiere disclosed Surgeon -Major Livingstone, lookini^ warm. He, whose other name was the soul of hospitality, made a profound and feeling remonstrance against Lindsay's going before tiffin, though Alicia, doing something to a bowl of nasturtiums, did not hear it. Not that her added protest would have detained Lindsay, who took his perturbation away with him as quickly as might be. j|{|r Alicia saw the cloud upon him as he shook hands with her, and found it but slightly consoling to reflect that his sun would without doubt re-emerge in all effulgence on the other side of the door. r CHAPTER IX THAT same Sunday, Alicia had been able to say to Lindsay about Hilda Howe, " We have not stood still — we know each other well now," and when he commented with some reserve upon this to follow it up. " But these things have so little to do with mere length of time or number of opportunities," she declared. " One springs at some people." A Major-General, interrupting, said he wished he had the chance ; and they talked about something else, l^ut perhaps this is enough to explain a note which went by messenger from the Livingstones' pillared palace in Middleton Street to Number Three, Lai Behari's Lane, on Monday morning. It was a short note, making a definite demand with an absence of colour and softness and emotion which was almost elaborate. Hilda, at breakfast, tore off the blank half sheet, and wrote in pencil — " I think I can arrange to get her here about five this afternoon. No rehearsal — they're doing some- thing to the gas-pipes at the theatre, so you will find me, anyway. And I'll be delighted to see you." She twisted it up and addressed it, reconsidered that, and made the scrap more secure in a yellow envelope. It had an embossed post-office stamp, which she sacrificed with resignation. Then she went back to an extremely uninteresting vegetable 7 I:' I, I 98 THE PATH OF A STAR it;. I l! 1 curry, with the reflection — " Can she possibly imagine IJ! ' that one doesn't see it yet ? " iil'' , Alicia came before five. She brought a novel of Gissing's, in order apparently that they might without fail talk about Gissing. Ililda was agreeable ; she would talk about Gissing, or about anything, tipped on the edge of her bed — Alicia had surmounted that degree of intimacy at a bound by the declara- tion that she could no longer endure the blue umbrellas — and clasping one knee, with an un- certain tenure of a chipped bronze slipper d prived of its heel. Wonderful silk draperies fell about her, with ink-spots on the sleeves ; her hair was magnificent. " It's so curious to me," she was saying of the novel, "that anyone should learn all that life as you do, at a distance, in a book. It's like looking at it through the little end of an opera-glass." '* I fancy that the most desirable way," said Alicia, glancing at the door. " Don't you believe it. The best way is to come out of it, to grow out of it. Tb.en all the rest has the charm of novelty and the value of contrast, and the distinction of being the best. You, poor dear, were born an artificial flower in a cardboard box. But you couldn't help it." *' Everybody doesn't grow out of it." The con- centration in Alicia's eyes returned again with vacillating wings. " She can't be here for a quarter of an hour yet." The slipper dropped at this point, and Hilda stooped to put it on again. She kept her foot in her hands, and regarded it pensively. ** Shoes are the one thing one shouldn't buy in the native quarter," she continued ; " at all events, ready-made." I 1 1'' I nil. I" THE PATH OF A STAR 99 " You have an audacity " Alicia ended abruptly in a wan smile. " Haven't I ? Are you quite sure he wants to marry her ? " " I know it." " From him ? " " From him." "Oh!" — Hilda deliberated a moment nursing her slipper — " Really ? Well, we can't let that happen." "Why not?" " You have a hardihood ! Is no reason plain to you ? Don't you see anything ? " Alicia smiled again painfully, as if against a tension of her lips. *' I see only one thing that matters — he wants it," she said. " And won't be happy till he gets it ! Rubbish, my dear! We are an intolerably self-sacrificing sex." Hilda felt about for pillows, and stretched her length along the bed. "They've taught us well, the men ; it's a blood disease now, running every- where in the female line. You may be sure it was a barbarian princess that hesitated between the lady and the tiger. A civilised one would have introduced the lady and given her a dot^ and retired to the nearest convent. Bah ! It's a deformity, like the dachshund's legs." Alicia looked as if this would be a little trouble- some, and not quite worth while, to follow. " The happiness of his whole life is involved," she said simply. " Oh dear yes — the old story ! And what about the happiness of yours? Do you imagine it's laudable, admirable, this attitude? Do you see yourself in it with pleasure? Have you got a sacred satisfaction of self-praise?" Contempt accumulated in Miss Howe's voice, and iji'i: ijljn ll!;;-! 'I If Mi: til"' 'i!|i' V ! loo THE PATH OF A STAR sat in her eyes. To mark her climax she kicked her slippers over the end of the bed. " It is idiotic — it's disgusting," she said. Alicia caught a flash from. her. "My attitude!" she cried. " What in the world do you mean ? Do you always think in poses ? I take no attitude. I care for him, and in that proportion I intend that he shall have what he wants — so far as I can help him to it. You have never cared for anybody — what do you know about it "> " Hilda took a calm, unprejudiced view of the ceiling. " I assure you I'm not an angel," she cried. " Haven't I cared ! Several times." " Not really — not lastingly." " I don't know about really ; certainly not lastingly. I've never thought the men should have a monopoly of nomadic susceptibilities. They entail the prettiest experiences." "Of course, in your profession — ^" " Don't be nasty, sweet lady. My affections have never taken the opportunities of our profession. They haven't even carried me into matrimony, thf.'Ugh I remember once, at Sydney, they brouglit me to the brink ! We must contrive an escape for Duff Lindsay." " You assume too much — a great deal too much. She must be beautiful — and good." " Give me a figure. She's a lily, and she draws the kind of beauty that lilies have from her personal chastity and her religious enthusiasm. Touch those things and bruise them, as — as marriage would touch and bruise them — and she would be a mere fragment of stale vegetation. You want him to clasp that to his bosom for the rest of his life?" " I won't believe you. You're coarse and you're cruel." THE PATH OF A STAR loi Tears flashed into Miss Livingstone's eyes with tliis. Hilda, still regarding the ceiling, was aware of them, and turned an impatient shoulder while they should be brushed undetected away. " I'm sorry, dear," she said. " I forgot. You are usually so intelligen;, one can be coarse and cruel with comfort, talking to you. Go into the bathroom and get my salts — they're on the washhand-stand — will you? I'm quite faint with all I'm about to undergo." Laura Filbert came in as Alicia emerged with the salts. Ignoring the third person with the bottle, she went directly to the bedside and laid her hand on Hilda's head. " Oh Miss Howe, I am so sorry you are sick — so sorry," she said. It was a cooing of professional concern, true to an ideal, to a necessity. " I am not very bad," Hilda improvised. " Hardly more than a headache." "She makes light of everything," Miss Filbert said, smiling toward Alicia, who stood silent, the prey of her impression. Discovering the blue salts bottle, Laura walked over to her and took it from her hands. " And what," said the barefooted Salvation Army girl to Miss Livingstone, "might your name be?" There was an infinite calm interest in it — it was like a conventionality of the other world, and before its assurance Alicia stood helpless. "Her name is Livingstone," called Hilda from the bed, "and she is as good as she is beautiful. You needn't be troubled about Jici- soul — she takes Communion every Sunday morning at the Cathedral." " Hallelujah ! " said Captain Filbert, in a tone of dubious congratulation. m I I02 THE PATH OF A STAR f hi- 1 i.:i. n I l.r. "Much better," said Hilda cheerfully, " to take it at the Cathedral, you know, than nowhere." Miss Filbert said nothing to this, but sat down upon the edge of the bed, looking serious, and stroked Hilda's hair. " You don't seem to have much fever," she said. "There was a poor fellow in the Military Hospital this morning with a temperature of one hundred and seven. I could hardly bear to touch him." "What was the matter?" asked Hilda idly, occupied with hypotheses about the third person in the room. " Oh, 1 don't know exactly. Some complication, I suppose, of Satan's tribute " " Divinest Laura!" Hilda interposed quickly, drawing her head back. "Do take a chair. It will be even more soothing to see you comfortable." Captain Filbert spoke again to Alicia, as she obeyed. " Miss Howe is more thoughtful for others than some of our converted ones," she said, with vast kindness. " I have often told her so. I have had a long day." " It may improve me in that character," Hilda said, "to suggest that if you will go about such people, a little carbolic disinfectant is a good thing, or a crystal or two of permanganate of potash in your balh. Do you use those things?" Laura shook her head. " Faith is better than disinfectants. I never get any harm. My Master protects me." " My goodness ! " Hilda said. And in the silence that occurred. Captain Filbert remarked that the only thing she used carbolic acid for was a decayed tooth. Presently Alicia made a great effort. She laid hands on Hilda's previous reference as a tangibility that remained with her. THE PATH OF A STAR 103 " Do you ever go to the Cathedral ? " she said. ' The faintest shade of dogmatism crossed Captain j Filbert's features, as when on a day of cloud fleeces the sun withdraws for an instant from a flower. Since ■ her sect is proclaimed beyond the boundaries of dogma ; it may have been some other obscurity, but that was I the effect. I " No, I never go there. We raise our own | Ebenezer ; we are a tabernacle to ourselves." f *' Isn't it exquisite— her way of speaking!' cried I Hilda from the bed, and Laura glanced at her with a I depn^cating, reproachful smile, in reproof of an offence | admittedly incorrigible. But she went on as if she i were conscious of a stimulus. '* Wherever the morning sky bends or the stars cluster is sanctuary enough," she said; "a slum at noonday is as holy for us as daisied fields ; the Name of the Lord walks with us. The Army is His Army, He is Lord of our hosts." " A kind of chant," murmured Hilda, and Miss Livingstone became aware that she might if she liked play with the beginnings of magnetism. Then that impression was carried away as it were on a puff of air, and it is hardly likely that she thought of it again. " I suppose all the i^/ife go to the Cathedral ? " Laura said. The sanctity of her face was hardly disturbed, but a curiosity rested upon it, and behind the curiosity a far-off little leaping tongue of some other thing. Hilda on the bed named it the constant feminine, and narrov/ed her eyes. " Dear me, yes," she said for Alicia. " His Excellency the Viceroy and all his beautiful A.D.C.'s, no end of military and their ladies, Secretaries to the Government of India in rows, fully choral, Under- Secretaries so thick they're kept in the vestibule till 1 1 Iliilii ■tv ■ i 1:^ 'SI I in! ' l! I ! 104 THE PATH OF A STAR tlie bells stop. ' Am/ make Thy cJioscn people joy fuV !*^ she intoned. " Not forgetting Surgeon-Major and Miss Alicia Livingstone, who occupy the fourth pew to the right of the main aisle, advantageously near the pulpit." " You know already what a humbug she is," Alicia said, but Captain Filbert's inner eye seemed retained by that imaginary congregation. " Well, it wouldn't be any attraction for me," she said, rising to go through the little accustomed function of her departure. " I'll be going now, I think. Ensign Sand has fever again, and 1 have to take her place at the Believers' Meeting." She took Hilda's hand in hers and held it for an instant. " Good-bye, and God bless you — in the way you most need," she said, and turned to Alicia, *' Good-bye. I am glad to know that we will be one in the glad hereafter though our paths may diverge" — her eye rested with acknowledgment upon Alicia's em- broidered sleeves — " in this world. To look at you I should have thought you were of the bowed down ones, not yet fully assured, but perhaps you only want a little more oxygen in the blood of your religion. Remember the word of the Lord — ' Rejoice 1 again I say unto you, rejoice ! ' Good- bye." She drew her head-covering farther forward, and moved to the door. It sloped to her shoulders and made them droop ; her native clothes clung about her breast and her hips in the cringing Oriental way. Miss Howe looked after her guest with a curl of the lip as uncontrollable as it was unreasonable. " A saved soul, perhaps. A woman — oh, assuredly," she said in the depths of her hair. The door had almost closed upon Captain Filbert when Alicia made something like a dash at an object THE PATH OF A STAR 105 about to elude her. "Oh," she exclaimed, "wait a minute. Will you come and see me? I think — I think you miglit do me good. I live at Number Ten, Middleton Street. Will you come?" Laura came back into the room. There was a little stiffness in her air, as if she repressed some- thing. " I have no objection," she said. "To-morrow afternoon— at five? Or — my brother is diin'ng at the club — would you rather come to dinner?" " Whiche\er is agreeable to you will suit me." She spoke carefully, after an instant's hesitation. "Then do come and dine — at eight," Alicia said; and it was agreed. She stood staring at the door when Laura finally closed it, and only turned when Hilda spoke. " You arc going to have him to meet her," she said. "May I come too?" " Certainly not." Alicia's grasp was also by this time on the door handle. "Are you going too? You daren't talk about her! " Hilda cried. "I'm going too. I've got the brou-^ham. I'll drive her home," said Alicia, and went out swiftly. "My goodness!" Hilda remarked again. Then she got up and found her slippers and wrote a note, which she addressed to the Reverend Stephen Arnold, Clarke Mission House, College Street. " Thanks immensely," it ran, " for your delightful offer to introduce me to Father Jordan and persuade him to show me the astronomical wonders he keeps in his tower at St. Simeon's. An hour with a Jesuit is an hour of milk and honey, and belonging to that charming Order, he won't mind my coming on a Sunday evening — the first clear one." I If io6 THE PATH OF A STAR Miss Howe signed her note and bit consideringly at the end of her pen. Then she added: "If you have any influence with Duff Lindsay, it may be news to you that you can exert it with advantage to keep him from marrying a cheap ethereal little rchgieuse of the Salvation Army named Filbert. It may seem more fitting that you should expostulate with her, but I don't advise that." li'. ■' !';i| m n liiiiiiiife ;|i|n iii ' lli t! I ii ! ilii lliii CHAPTER X THE door of Ensi>in Sand's apartment stood open with a purposeful air when Captain Filbert reached headquarters that evening ; but in any case it is likely that she would have gone in. Mrs. Sand walked the floor, carrying a baby, a pale sticky baby with blotches, which had inherited from its maternal parent a conspicuous lack of buttons. Mrs. Sand's room was also ornamented with texts, but they had apparently been selected at random, and they certainly hung that way. The piety of the place seemed at the control of an older infant, who sat on the floor and played with his father's re<4imental cap. On the other side of the curtain Captain Sand audibly washed himself and brushed his hair. " What kind of meetin' did you have? " asked Mrs. Sand. "There — there now ; he shall have his bottle, so he shall ! " "A beautiful meeting. Abraham Lincoln White, the Savannah negro, you know, came as a believer for the first time, and so did Miss Rozario from White- away and Laidlaw's. VVe had such a happy time." " What sort of collection ? " Laura opened a knotted handkerchief and counted out some copper coins. " Only seven annas three pice ! And you call that a good meeting ! 1 don't believe you exhorted them to give ! " ^ lOT 11 It liHii r:l||n!ii: 'iill!; J! It., 108 THE PATH OF A STAR " Oh, I think I did !" Laura returned mechanically. " Seven annas and three pice ! And you know what the Commissioner wrote out about our last quarter's earnings ! What did you say?" " I said — I said the collection would now be taken up," Lau*-a faltered. *' Oh dear ! oh dear ! Leopold, stop clawing me ! Couldn't you think of anythin' more tellin' or more touchin' than that ? Fever or no fever, it does not do for me to stay away from the regular mectin's. One thing is plain — he wasn't there ! " " Who ? " " Well, you've never told me his name, but I expect you've got your reasons." Mrs. Sand's tone was not arch, but slightly resentful. '* I mean the gentleman that attends so regular and sits behind, under the window. A society man, I should say, to look at him, though the officers of this Army are no respecters of persons, and I don't suppose the Lord takes any notice of his clothes." " His name is Mr. Lindsay. No, he wasn't there." The girl's tone was distant and cold. The rebuke about the collection had gone home to a place raw with similar reproaches. " I hope you haven't been discouraging him?" Captain Filbert looked at her superior officer with astonishment. " I have entreated him to come to the meetings. But he never attends a Believers' Rally. Why should he?" " Wiiat's his state of mind ? He came to see you, didn't he, the other night ? " "Yes, he did. I don't think he's altogether careless." "Ain't he seeking?" THE PATH OF A STAR 109 " He wouldn't admit it, but he may not know himself. The Lord has different ways of work- ing. What else should bring him, night after night?" Mrs. Sand glanced meaningly at a point on the floor, with lifted eyebrows, then at her officer, and finally hid a b:idly- discijjlined smile behind her baby's head. When she looked back a^ain Laura had flushed all over, and an embarrassment stood between them, which she felt was absurd, " My ! " she said, — scruples in breaking it could hardly perhaps have been expected of her, — "you do look nice when you've got a little colour. But if you can't see that it's you that brings him to the meetin's, you must be blind, that's all." Captain I'^ilbcrt's confusion was dispelled, as by the wave of a wand. " Then I hope I may go on bringing him," she said. " He couldn't come to a better place." "Well, you'll have to be careful," said Mrs. Sand, as if with severe intent. " But I don't say discourage him ; 1 wouldn't say that. You may be an influence for good. It may be His will that you should be pleasant to the young man. But don't make free with him. Don't, on any account, have him put his arm round your waist." " Nobody has done that to me," Laura replied austerely, " since I left Putney, and so long as I am in the Army nobody will. Not that Mr. Lindsay " (she blushed again) " would ever want to. The class he belongs to look down on it." " The class he belongs to do worse things. The Army doesn't look down on it. It's only nature, and the Army believes in working with nature. If it was Mr. Harris I wouldn't say a word — he marches under the Lord's banner." ' ; ■if Si no THE PATH OF A STAR ijj Captain Filbert listened without confusion ; her expression was even slightly complacent. "Well," she said, '* I told Mr. Harris last evening that the Lieutenant and I couldn't go on giving him so much of our time, and he seemed to think he'd been keeping company with me. I had to tell him I hadn't any such idea." " Did he seem much disappointed ? " " He said he thought he would have more of the feeling of belonging to the Army if he was married in it ; but I told him he would have to karn to walk alone." Mrs. Sand speculatively bit her lips. " I don't know but what you did right," she said. " By the grace of God you converted him, and he hadn't ought to ask more of you. But I have a kind of feeling that Mr. Lindsay '11 be harder to convince." " I daresay." " It would be splendid, though, to garner him in. He might be willing to march with us and subscribe half his pay, like poor Captain Corby, of the Queen's army, did in Rangoon." " He might be proud to." " We must all try and bring sin home to him," Mrs. Sand remarked with rising energy ; " and don't you go saying anything to him hastily. If he's gone on you " " Oh Ensign ! let us hope he is thinking of higher things ! Let us both pray for him. Let Captain Sand pray for him too, and I'll ask the Lieutenant. Now that she's got Miss Rozario safe into the kingdom, I don't think she has any special object." "Oh yes, we'll pray for him," Ensign Sand returned, as if that might have gone without saying, " but you " " And give me that precious baby. You must be Ml- ■i 't ' thp: path of a star m completely worn out. I should enjoy taking care of him ; indeed I should." " It's the first — the very first — time she ever took that dra^gin' child out of my arms for an instant," the Ensign remarked to her husband and next in command later in the evening, but she resigned the infant without protest at the time. Laura carried liim into her own room with something like gaiety, and there repeated to him more nursery rhymes, dating from secular Putney, than she would have believed she remembered. The Believers' Rally, as will be understood, was a gathering of some selectness. If the Chinaman came, it was because of the vagueness of his percep- tion of the privileges he claimed ; and his ignorance of all tongues but his own left no medium for turning him out. Qualms of conscience, however, kept all Miss Rozario's young lady friends away, and these also doubtless operated to detain Duff Lindsay. One does not attend a Believers' Rally unless one's personal faith extends beyond the lady in command of it, and one specially refrains if one's spiritual condition is a delicate and debatable matter with her. In VVellesley Square, later in the evening, the conditions were different. It would not be easy to imagine a scene that suggested greater liberality of sentiment. The moon shed her light upon it, and the palms threw fretted shadows down. Bej'ond them, on four sides, lines of street-lamps shone, and tram-drivers whistled bullock-carts off the lines, and street pedlars lifted their cries. A torch marked the core of the group of exhorters ; it struck pale gold from Laura's hair, and made glorious the buttons of the man who beat the drum. She talked to the people in their own language; the "open air" was designed for the people. " Kti-o / Kiko ! " (Why 1 ^!' '*!■ 'ii; Ml' I 112 THE PATH OF A STAR ■m :fi Why!) Lindsay heard her cry, where he stood in the shadow, on the edge of the crowd. He looked down at a coolie - woman with shrivelled breasts crouched on her haunches upon the ground, bent 4 1 with the toil of half a century, and back at the girl || beside the torch. " Do not delay until to-morrow ! " Laura besought them. " Ku/ ka dart miit karo ! " A sensation of disgust assailed him ; he turned away. Then, in an impulse of atonement — he felt already so responsible for her — he went back and dropped a coin into the coolie - creature's lap. But he grew more miserable as he stood, and finally walked deliberately to a wooden bench at a distance where he could not hear her voice. Only the hymn pursued him ; they sang presently a hymn. In the chorus the words were distinguishable, borne in the robust accents of Captain Sand — " Us ki ho tarif, Us ki ho tarif ! » The strange words, limping on the familiar air, made a barbarous jangle, a discordance of a specially intolerable sort. "Glory to His name ! Glory to His name ! " Lindsay wondered, with a poignancy of pity, whether the coolie - woman were singing too, and found something like relief in the questionable reflec- tion that if she wasn't, in view of the rupee, she ought to be. His " Good-evening ! " when the meeting was over, was a cheerful, general salutation, and the familiarity of the sight of him was plain in the response he got, lllji-jljij equally general and equally cheerful. Lieutenant ' '' ' Da Cruz's smile was even further significant, if he had thought of interpreting it, and there was overt ^U\' }, : 'i .i THE PATH OF A STAR 113 amiability in the manner in which Ensign Sand put her hymn-books together and packed everybody, including her husband, whose arm she took, out of the way. "Wait for me," Laura said, to whom a Eurasian beggar made elaborate appeal, as they moved off. " I guess you've got company to see you home," Mrs. Sand called out, and they did not wait. As Lindsay came closer the East Indian paused in his tale of the unburied wife for whom he could not afford a coffin, and slipped away. " The Ensign knows she oughtn't to talk like that," Laura said. Lindsay marked with a surge of plea- sure that she was flushed, and seemed perturbed. " What she said was quite true," he ventured. " But — anybody would think " " What would anybody think ? Shall we keep to this side of the road? It's quieter. What would anybody think ? " " Oh, silly things." Laura threw up her head with a half laugh. " Things I needn't mention." Lindsay was silent for an instant. Then " Between us ? " he asked, and she nodded. Their side of the street, along the square, was nearly empty. He found her hand and drew it f.. through his arm. " Would you mind so very much," he said, " if those silly things were true? " He spoke I as if to a child. His passion was never more clearly ' a single object to him, divorced from all complicating and non-essential impressions of her. " I would give all I possess to have it so," he told her, catching at any old foolish phrase that would serve. " I don't believe you mean anything like all you say, Mr. Lindsay." Her head was bent and she kept her hand within his arm. He seemed to be a circumstance that brought her reminiscences of how 8 I: m I is Hl't' 114 THE PATH OF A STAR one behaved sentimentally toward a young man with whom there was no serious entanglement. It is not surprising that he saw only one thing, walls going down before him, was aware only of somethit-ig like invitation. Existence narrowed itself to a single glowing point ; as he looked it came so near that he bounded to meet it. " Dear," he said, " you can't know — there is no way of telling you — what I mean. I suppose every man feels the same thing about the woman he loves ; but it seems to me that my life had never known the sun until I saw you. I can't explain to you how poor it was, and I won't try; but I fmcy God sends every one of us, if we know it, some one blessed chance, and He did more for me — He lifted the veil of my stupidity and let me see it, passing by in its halo, trailing clouds of glory. I don't want to make you understand, though — I want to make you promise. I want to be absolutely sure from to-night that you'll marry me. Say that you'll marry me — say it before we get to the crossing. Say it, Laura." She listened to his first words with a little half-controlled smile, then made as if she would withdraw her hand, but he held it with his own, and she heard him through, walking beside him formally on her bare feet, and looking carefuly at the asphalt pavement as they do in Putney. " I don't object to your calling me by my given name," she said when he had done, " but it can't go any further than that, Mr. Lindsay, and you ought not to bring God into it — indeed you ought not. You are no son or servant of His — you are among those whose very light is darkness, and how great is your darkness 1 " " Don't," he said shortly. " Never mind about that — now. You needn't be afraid of me, Laura — there hi 1 1 1 ' ^ ■ 1 \ 1 ' -■^ts?% Jl'^^ ' 4 j%i:^^ K- J -f^. , '«. -T^,.-** ■:^r ■■■• / -^ f^A*- ' *y-'.3f: ■rrsn »v T ^0 -" • i • ''*?•■' ' n^^ J i ' 1 Kf '1; .■ , « ... ./7; PP^« ■ it. ^H f ^. H ^m ..^ . :^^iil^ ^ i E:-- '2: ■ . .- •FH\Wkt^.55,^^j^,. 1 i^l •SAY THAI Y(»l I.F- MARKV MK. THE PATH OF A STAR 115 are decent chaps, you know, outside your particular Kingdom of [ leaven, and one of them wants you to marry him, that's how it is. Will you?" '' I don't wish to judge you, Mr. Lindsay, and I'm vcr}^ much obliged, but I couldn't dream of it." '* Don't dream of it ; consider it, accept it. Why, dear creature, you are mine already — don't you feel that?" Her arm was certainly warm within his and he had the possession of his eyes in her. Her tired body even clung to him. " Are you quite sure you haven't begun to think of loving me?" he demanded. *' It isn't a question of love, Mr. Lindsay, it's a question of the Army. You don't seem to think the Army counts for anything." One is convinced that it wasn't a question of love, the least in the world ; but Lindsay detected an evasion in what she said, and the flame in him leaped up. " Sweet, when love is concerned there is no other question." " Is that a quotation ? " she asked. She spoke coldly, and this time she succeeded in withdrawing her hand. " I daresay you think the Army very common, Mr. Lindsay, but to me it is marching on a great and holy crusade, and I march with it. You would not ask me to give up my life-work ? " " Only to take it into another sphere," Duff said unreflectingly. He was checked, but not discouraged ; impatient, but in no wise cast down. She had not flown, she walked beside him placidly. She had no intention of flight. He tried to resign himself to the task of beating down her trivial objections, curbing his athletic impulse to leap over them. "Another sphere," — he caught a subtle pleasure J, 1 1 j^'i n Bl^r'-if V't 41 ii6 THE PATH OF A STAR in her enunciation. " I suppose you mean high society ; but it would never be the same." " Not quite the same. You would have to drive to see your sinners in a carriage and pair, and you might be obliged to dine with them in — what do ladies generally dine in ? — white satin and diamonds, or pearls. I think I would rather see you in pearls." He was aware of the inexcusableness of the points he made, but he only stopped to laugh inwardly at their impression, watching the absorbed turn of her head. " We might think it well to be a little select in our sinners — most of them would be on Government House list, just as most of your present ones are on the lists of the charitable societies or the police magistrates. But you would find just as much to do for them." " I should not even know how to act in such company." " You can go home for a year, if you like, to be taught, to some people I know ; delightful people, who will understand. A year ! You will learn in three months — what odds and ends there are to know. I couldn't spare you for a year." Lindsay stopped. He had to. Captain Filbert was murmuring the cadences of a hymn. She went through two stanzas, and covered her eyes for a moment with her hand. When she spoke it was in a quiet, level, almost mechanical way. " Yes," she said. " The Cross and the Crown, the Crown and the Cross. Father in heaven, 1 do not forget Thy will and Thy purpose, that I should bring the word of Thy love to the poor and the lowly, the outcast and those despised. And what I say to this man, who offers me the gifts and the gladness of a world that had none for Thee, is the answer Thou hast THE PATH OF A STAR ,,7 darkness oHhe nhc. Lr ''1,''^'^ Z"'" "^^ ^''^vfo.s before he Jul e reii scd -.^l? 5^^°"'6'.fi missed again, by thunder! . . . paid to converse with itinerant females . . . seven columns . . . infernal idiocy " . . . Hilda descended in safety and at leisure, reflecting with amusement as she made her way down that Mr. Sinclair was doubtless waiting until his lady visitor was well out of earshot to make it warm for the editor. * Country post. hi: CHAPTER xri 1FIND m>sclf vvoiulerinj,^ whether Calcutta would have found anythin^r very exquisitelv amusing m the satisfactions which exchanged them- selves between Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope's Ieadin things s) out of perspective," Stephen said, "that I don't think 1 should tell you if they were so. l^ut they're not. Kally Nath is to be baptized to-morrow. W^e are certain to get our oratory." " I am very glad," Hilda interrupted. " When one prays for so long a time together it must be better to have fresh air. It will certainly be better for Brother Colquhoun. He seems to have such a weak chest." " It will be better for us all." Arnold seemed to reflect, across his teacup, how much better it would be. Then he added, " I saw Lindsay last night." " Again ? And " " I think it is perfectly hopeless. I think he is making way." 136 THE PATH OF A STAR " Sickening ! I hoped you would not spea^v to him again. After all — another man — it's naturally of no use ! " ** I spoke as a priest ! " " Did he swear at you ? " " Oh dear no ! He was rather sympathetic. And I went very far. Ikit I could get him to see nothing — to feel nothing." " How far did you go ? " " I told him that sho was consecrated, that he proposed to commit sacrilega He seemed to think he could make it up to her." '* If anyone el "^ had said that to me I should have laughed — you don c suspect the irony in it,"" Hilda said. " Pray who is to make it up to him? " " I suppose there is that point of view." " I should think so, indeed ! But taking it, I despair with you. I had her here the other day and tried to make the substance of her appear before him. 1 succeeded too — he gave me the most uncomfortable looks — but I might as well have let it alone. The great end of nature," Hilda went on, putting down her cup, ** reasonable beings in their normal state would never lend themselves to. So she invents these temporary insanities. And therein is nature cruel, for they might just as well be permanent. That's a platitude, I know," she added, " but it's irresistibly suggested." Stephen looked with some fixedness at a point on the other side of the room. The platitude brought him, by some process of inversion, the vision of a drawing-room in Addison Gardens, occupied by his mother and sisters, engaged with whatever may be Kensington's substitutes at the moment for the spinet and the tambour frame ; and he had a disturbed .sense that they might characterise such a statement THE PATH OF A STAR 137 differently, if, indeed, they would consent to characterise it at all. He looked at tiie wall as if, being a solid and steadfast object, it might correct the qualm — it was really something like that — which the wide sweep of her c) nicism brought him. " From what he told me last week I thought we shouldn't see it. He seemed determined enough but depressed, and not hopeful. I fancied she was being upheld — I thought she would easily pull through. Indeed, I wasn't sure that there was any great tem{)tation. Somebody must be helping him." "The devil, no doubt," Ililda replied concisely; "and with equal certainty. Miss Alicia Livingstone." Arnold gave her a look of surprise. " Surely not my cousin ! " he protested. " She can't understand." "Oh, I beg of you, don't speak to her\ I think she understands. I think she's only too tortuously intelligent." Stephen kept an instant of nervous silence. " May I ask ? " he began, formally. " Oh yes ! It is almost an indecent thing to say of anyone so exquisitely self-contained, but your cousin is very much in love with Mr. Lindsay herself. It seems almost a li'^erty, doesn't it, to tell )-ou such a thing about a member of your family ? " she went on, at Arnold's blush ; " but you asked me, you know. And she is making it her ecstatic agony to bring this precious union about. I think she is taking a kinder- garten method with the girl — having her there constantly and showing her little scented, luxurious bi's of Avhat she is so possessed to throw away. People in Alicia's condition have no sense of immorality." "That makes it all the more painful," said Arnold ; but the interest in his tone was a little remote, and his gesture, too, which was not quite a shrug, had a 138 THE PATH OF A STAR relegating effect upon any complication between Alicia and Lindsay. I le sat for a moment without saying more, covering his eyes with his hand. "Why should you care so much?" Hilda asked gently. " You are at the very antipodes of her sect. You can't endorse her methods — you don't trust her results." " Oh, all that ! It's of the least consequence." He spoke with a curious, governed impulse coming from beneath his shaded eyes. " It's seeing another ideal ])ullcd down, gone under, something that held, as best it could, a ray from the source. It's another glimpse of the strength of the tide — terrible. It's a cruel hint that one lives above it in the heaven of one's own hopes, by some mere blind accident. To have set one's feeble hand to the spiritualising of the world and to feel the possibility of that ^ " " I see," said Hilda, and perhaps she did. But his words oppressed her. Slic got up with a movement which almost shook them off, and went to a promiscuous looking-glass to remove her hat. She was refreshed and vivified — she wanted to talk of the warm world. She let a decent interval elapse, however ; she waited till he took his hand from his eyes. Even then, to make the transition easier, she said, " You ought to be lifted up to-day, if you are going to baptize Kally Nath to-morrow." "The Brother Superior will do it. And I don't know — I don't know. The young woman he is to marry withdraws, I believe, if he comes oxer to us " " The young woman he is to marry ! Oh my dear and reverend friend ! Avtr ccs g'ens Id ! I have had a most amusing afternoon," she went on quickly. " I have taken off my hat, now let me remove your halo." She was safe with her conceit ; Arnold would THE PATH OF A STAR 139 always smile at any imputation of saintship. lie held himself a person of broad indulgences, and would point openly to his consumption of tea-cakes. ]]ut this afternoon a miasma hung over him. Hilda saw it, and bent herself, with her graphic recital, to dispel it, percei\cd it thicken and settle down upon him, and went bravely on to the end. iVIr. Macandrew and Mr. Molyneux Sinclair lived and spoke before him. It was comedy enough, in essence, to spread over a matinee. "And that is the sort of thing you store up and value," he said, when she had finished. "These persons will add to your knowledge of lite?" " Extremely," she replied to all of it. " I suppose they will in their measure. But personally I could wish yi)U had not gone. Your work has no right to make such demands." "Be reasonable," she said, flushing. "Don't talk as if personal dignity were within the reach of everybody. It's the most expensive of privileges. And nothing to be so very proud of — generally the product of somebody else's humiliations, handed down. But the humiliations must have been successful, handed down in cash. My father drove a cab and died in debt. His name was Cassidy. I shall be dignified some day — some day ! But you see I must make it possible myself, since nobody has done it for me." " Well, then, I'll alter my complaint. Why should you play with your sincerity ? " ** 1 didn't play with it," she flashed ; " I abandoned it. I am an actress." They often permitted themselves such candours ; to all appearance their discussion had its usual equable quality, and I am certain t'nat Arnold was not even aware of the tension upon his nerves. He 140 THE PATH OF A STAR fidgeted with the tassel of his ceinture, and she watched his moving fingers. Presently she spoke quietly, in a different key. ** I sometimes think," she said, "of a child I knew, in the other years. She had the simplest nature, tjie finest instincts. Her impulses, within her small limits, were noble — she was the keenest, loyalest little person ; her admirations rather made a fool of her. When i look at the woman she is now I think the uses of life are hard, my friend — they arc hard." He missed the personal note; he took what she said on its merits as an illustration. " And yet," he replied, " they can be turned to admirable purpose." "I wonder!" Hilda exclaimed brightly. She had turned down the leaf of that mood. " But we are not cheerful— let us be cheerful. For my part I am rejoicing as I have not rejoiced since the first of December. Look at this ! " She opened a small black leather l)ag, and poured money out of it, in notes and currency, into her lap. " l^ it a legacy?" " It's pay," she cried, with pleasure dimpling about her lips. " I have been paid— we have all been paid ! It's so unusual — it makes me feel quite generous. Let me see. I'll give \ou this, and this, and this " — she counted into her open palm ten silver rupees, — " all those I will give >'ou for your mission. Fiends ! " and she clinked them together and held them out to him. He had risen to go, and his face looked grey and small. Something in him had mutinied at the levity, the quick change of her mood. He could only draw into his shell ; doubtless he thought that a legitimate and inoffensive proceeding. sill. ( i.iNKiu ii!i: i:i I'l i;s iik.i.iiiii; am> iih.d iiik.m hi i m iiim. ' THE PATH OF A STAR 141 "Thanks, no," he said, - I think not. We desire peoples prayers, rather than their ahns." ^ He u ent auay inimcdiatel}-, and she ^rlcssed over his scandalous behaviour, and said farewell to him as she ahvays did, in spite of the unusual look of con"- sciousness ni her eyes. She continued to hold the ten rupees carefully and separately, as if she would aterexamuie them in diagnosing her pain. It was keener and profounder than any humiliation, the new voice crymg cut, of a trampled tenderness. She stood and looked after him for a moment with startled eyes and her hand, in a familiar gesture of her profession, upon her heart. Then she went to her room, and deliberately loosened her garments and lay down upon her bed, first to sob like that little child she remembered, and afterwards to think until the world came and knocked at her door and 'bade her come out of herself and earn money. CHAPTER XIII THE com])ulsion which took Stephen Arnold to Crooked Lane is hardly ouis to examine. It must have been strong, since goini^ up to Mrs. Sand involved certain concessions, doubtless intrinsically trifling, but of exai^gerated discomfort to the mind spiritually cloistered, whatever its other latitude. Among them was a distinctly necessary apolojy, difficult enough to make to a lady of rank so superior and authority so voyant in the Church militant, by a mere fightini^ soul without such straps and buttons as might compel recognition upon equal terms. It is impossible to know how far Stephen envisaged the visit as a duty — the priestly horizon is perhaps not wholly free from mirage — or to what extent he confessed it an indulgence. He was certainly aware of a stronger desire than he could altogether account for that Captain Filbert should not desert her post. The idea had an element of irritation oddly personal ; he could not bear to reflect upon it. It .may be wondered whether in any flight of venial imagination Arnold saw himself in a parallel situation with a lady. I am sure he did not. It may be considered, however, that among mirages there are unaccountable resemblances — resemblances without shape or form. He might fix his gaze, at all events, upon the supreme argument that those who were given to holy work, under any condition, in any degree, should f 14'' I THE PATH OF A STAR 143 make no Rxlcdication of tbem-elvcs. Tliis had to support him as best it could ai^^ainst the conviction that had Captain Filbert been Sister Anastasia, for example, of the Baker Institution, and Ensign Sand the Mother Superior of its Calcutta branch, it was improbable that he would have ventured to announce his interest in the matter by his card, or in any other way. It was a hesitatin vented ? " Mrs. Sand looked at her visitor with dry suspicion. " I suppose you are a friend of his," she said. " I have known him for years. Pray don't nn's- understand mc. There is nothing against hini — nothing whatever." "Oh, I don't suppose there is, except that he is not on the Lord's side. But I don't exjicct any of his friends are anxious for him to marry an officer in tlic Salvation Army. Society people ain't fond of the Army, and never will be." " His people — he has only distant relatives living — are all at home," Stephen said vaguely. The situa- tion had become slightly confused. " Then you speak for them, I suppose ? " " Indeed not. I am in no communication with them whatever. I fancy they know nothing about it. I am here entirely — entirely of my own accord. I have come to place myself at your disposition if there is anything I can do, any word I can say, to the end of preventing this catastrophe in a spiritual life so pure and devoted ; to ask you at all events to let me join my prayers to yours that it shall not come about." The squalor of the room seemed to lift before his eyes and be suffused with light. At last he had made himself plain. But Mrs. Sand was not trans- figured. She seemed to sit, with her hands folded, in the midst of a calculation. " Then he Jias put th^ question. I told her he would," she said. " I believe he has asked her to marry him and she has refused, more than once. But he is importunate, and I hear she needs help." "Mr. Lindsay," said Mrs. Sand, "is a very takin' young man." y THK PATH OF A STAR 147 " I suppose \vc must consider that. There is posi- tion too, and wealth. These things count — we are all so human — even against the Divine realities into possession of which Miss Filbert must have so perfectly entered." " I thouglit he must be pretty well off. Would he be one of them Government officials? " " He is a broker." " Oh, is he indeed?" Mrs. Sand's enlightenment was evidently doubtful. "Well, if they get mar- ried Captain I^'ilbert '11 have to resign. It's against the regulations for her to marry outside of the Army.'' " But is she not vowed to her work ; isn't her life turned for ever into that channel ? Would it not be horrible to you to see the world interfere?" " I won't say but what I'd be sorry to see her leave us. But I wouldn't stand in her way either, and neither would Captain Sand." "Stand in her way! In her way to material luxury, poverty of spirit, the shirking of all the high alternatives, the common moral mediocrity of the world. I would to God I could be that stumbling block ! I have heard her — I have seen the light in her that may so possibly be extinguished." " I don't deny she has a kind of platform gift, but she's losin' her voice. And she doesn't understand briskin' people up, if you know what I mean." "She will be pulled down — she will go under!" Arnold repeated in the def)ths of his spirit. He stood up, fumbling with his hat. Mrs. Sand and her apartment, her children out of doors in the per- ambulator, and the whole organisation to which she appertained had grown oppressive and unnecessary. He was aware of a desire to put his foot again in his own world, where things were seen, were understood. [48 TIIK PATH OF A STAR lie thout^ht there might be solace in relating the affair to Brother Colquhoun. " It's a case," said Mrs. Sand judicially, " where I wouldn't think myself called on to say one word. Such things everyone has a right to decide for them- selves. But you oughtn't to forget that a married woman" — she looked at Arnold's celibate habit as if to hold it accountable for much — " can have a great influence for good over him that she chooses. I am pretty sure Captain Filbert's already got Mr. Lindsay almost persuaded. I shouldn't be at all surprised if he joined the Army himself when she's had a good chance at him." Arnold put on his hat with a groan, and began the descent of the stairs. " Good-afternoon then," Mrs. Sand called out to him from the top. He turned mechanically and bared his head. " I beg your pardon," he said. " Good-afternoon." f CHAPTER XIV MRS. SAND fouiul it difficult to make up her mind upc;!! several points touching the visit of the Reverend Stephen Arnold. Us purport, of which she could not deny her vague appreciation, drew a cloud across a rosy prosi)ect, and in this light his conduct showed unpardonable ; on the other hand it implied a compliment to the corps, it made the spiritual position of an officer of the Army, a junior too, a matter of moment in a wider world than might be suspected ; and before this consideration Mrs. Sand expanded. She reflected liberally that salva- tion was not necessarily frustrated by the laying-on of hands ; she had serene fancies of a republic of the redeemed. She was a j)rey to further hesitations regarding the expediency of mentioning the inter- view to I. aura, and as private and confidential it ministered for two days to her satisfactions of super- ior officer. In the etui, however, she had to sacrifice it to the girl's imperturbable silence. She chose an intimate and a priv.ite hour, and shut the tloor care- fully upon herself and her captain, but she had not at all decided, when she sat down on the edge of the bed, what complexion to give t(j the m.atter, nor had she a very definite idea, when she got up again, of what complexion she had given it. Laura, from the first word, had upset her by an intense eagerness, a determination not to lo.-e a s}llable. Captain Filbert 14U I50 THE PATH OF A STAR insisted upon licarin^ all before she would acknow- ledi^e anylhinij ; she hunc^ upon the sentences Mrs. Sanrl repeated, and joined tliein toj^cther as if they were parts of a puzzle ; she finally had possession of the conversation much as I have already u ritten it down. As Mrs. Sand aftervvarrl told her husband, Miss Filbert sat there growin<^ whiter and whiter, more and more worked up, and it was impossible to take any comfort in talkin^^ to her. It seemed as if she, the Knsign, might save herself the trouble of giving an opinion one way or the other, and not a thing could she get the girl to say except that it was true enough that the gentleman wanted to marry her, and she was ashamed of having let it go so far. But she would never do it — never ! She declared she would write to this Mr. Arnold and thank him, and ask him to pray for her, " and she as much as ordered me to go and do the same," concluded Mrs. Sand, with an inflection which made its own comment upon such a subversion of discipline. Stephen, under uncomfortable compulsion, .sent Laura's letter — she did write — to Lindsay. '* I can- not allow you to be in the dark about what I am doing in the matter," he explained ; " though if I had not this necessity for writing you might reasonably complain of an intrusive and impertinent letter. But 1 must let you know that she has appealed to mc, and that as far ns I can I will help her." Duff read botli communication.'^ Laura's to the priest was brief and very technical — between the business quarters of Ralli Brothers and the Delhi and London Bank, with his feet in the opposite seat of his office-gharry and his forehe.ad puckered by an imme- diate calculation forward in rupee paper. His irrita- tion spoiled his transaction — there was a distinct edge in the manager's manner when they parted, and it was THE PATH OF A STAR 151 perhaps a pardonable weakness that led him to dash in blue i)encil across the paij^e covered with Arnold's minute handwriting, "Then you have done with pasty comi)romises — you have gone over to the Jesuits. I congratulate you," and readdressed the envelope to College Street. The brown tidi! of the crowd brought him an instant me.-senger, and lie stood in the doorway lor a moment afterwards frowning upon the yellow turbans that swung along in the sunlight against the white wall opposite, across the narrow commercial road. The flame of his indignation set forth his features with definiteness and relief, consuming altogether the soft amused well-being which was nearly always there. Mis lips set themselves together, and Mrs. Sand would have been encouraged in any scheme of practical utility by the lines that came about his mouth. A brother in finance of some astuteness, wiio saw him scramble into his gharry, divined that with regard to a weighty matter in jute mill shares pending, Lindsay had decided upon a coup, and made his arrangements ac- cordingly. He also went ujjon his way with a fresh impression of Lindsay's und(Miiable good looks, as sometimes in a coin new from the mint one is struck with the beauty of a die dulled b)- use and famili- arity. Stephen Arnold, receiving his answer, composed him.sclf to feel distress, but when he had read it, that emotion was lightened in him by another sentiment. " A communit)' admirable in m ni)' ways," he mur- mured, refolding the page. " Does he think he is insulting me ? " Whatever degree of influence, Jesuitical or other, Lindsay was inclined to concede to Stephen's inter- mediary, he was compelled to recognise witlnjut delay that Captain Filbert, in the e.\erci>e of her profession, I 152 THE PATH OF A STAR had not neglected to acquire a knowledge of defensive operations. She retired effectively, tlie quarters in Crooked Lane became her fortified retreat, whence she issued only under escort and upon service strictly obligatory. Succour from Arnold doubtless reached her by the post ; and Lindsay felt it an anomaly in military tactics that the same agency should bring back upon him with a horrid recoil the letters witli which he strove to assault her position. Nor could Alicia induce any soj'tie to Middleton Street. Her notes of invitation to quiet teas and luncheons were answered on blue -lined piper, the pen dipped in reticence and the palest ink, always with the negative of a formal excuse. They loosed the burden of her [I complicity from Miss Livingstone's shoulders, these notes which bore so much the atmosphere of Crooked Lane, and at the same time they formed the indictment against her which was, perhaps, best calculated to weigh upon her conscience. She saw it, holding them at arm's length, in enormous characters that ever stamped and blotted out the careful, taught- looking writing, and the invariable " God bless you, yours truly," at the end. They were all there, aridly com- plete, the limitations of the lid)' to whom she was helping Lindsay to bind himself without a gleam of possibility of escaj)e or a rift through which tiniest hope could creep, to emerge smiling upon the other side. When she saw him, in fatalistic reverie, going about ten years hence attached to the body of this petrification, she was almost disposed to abandon the pair, to let them take their wretched chance. But this was a climax which did not occur often ; she returneJ,in most of her waking moments, to devising schemes by which Laura might be delivered into the hands she was so likely to encumber. The new French poet, the American novelist of the year, and THE PATH OV A STAR 153 a work by Mr. John IMorley lay upon Alicia's Uiblc many days together for this reason. She sometimes remembered what she expected of these volumes, what />/cin air sensations or what profound pluiii^es, and did not quite like her indifference as to wi-.ether her expectations were fulfilled. She discovered her- self intellectually jaded — there had been tiring excursions — and took to daily rides which carried her far out among the rice-fields, and gave her sound nights to sustr ''n the burden of her dreaming days. She had ideas aoout her situation ; she believed she lived outside of it. At all events she took a line; the new Arab was typical, and there were other measures which she arranged deliberately with the idea that she was making a physical fight. Life might weigh one down with a dragging ball and chain, but one could always measure the strength (jf one's pinions against these things. She made it her sorry and remorseless task to separate from her impulses those that she found lacking in philosophy, hinting of the foolish woman, and to turn a cruel heel upon them. She stripped her meditations of all colour and atmosphere ; she would not accept from her grief the luxury of a rag to wrap herself in. If this gave her a skeleton to live with, she had what gratification there was in observing that it was anatomically as it should be. The result that one saw from the outside was chiefly a look of delicate hardness, of tissue a little frayed, but showing a quality in the process. We may hope that some un- confessed satisfaction was derivable from her con- tinued reception of Duff's confidences — it has long been evident that he foimd her i)ersuadable — her un- flinching readiness to consult with him ; granting the analytic turn we may almost suppose it. Starvation is so monotonous a misery that a gift of personal 154 THE PATH OF A STAR diagnosis might easily lend attraction to poisoned food as an alternative, if one may be permitted a melodramatic simile in a case which Alicia kept conventional enough. She did not even abate the usual number of Duff's invitations to dinner when there was certainly nothing to repay her for regarding him across a gulf of flowers and silver, and a tide of conversation about the season's paper-cliising, except the impoverished complexion which j)cople acquire who sit much in Bcntinck Street, desirous and un- satisfied. It may very well be that she regretted her behaviour in this respect, for it was cv^entually after one of these parties that Surgeon-Major Livingstone, pressing upon his departing guest in the hall the usual whisky and soda, found it necessary instead to give him another kind of support, and to put him immediately and authoritatively to bed. Lindsay was very well content to submit ; he confessed to fever off and on for four or five days past, and while the world went round the pivotal staircase, as Dr. Livingstone gave him an elbow up, he was indistinctly convinced that the house of a friend was better than a shelf at the club. The next evening's meeting saw his place empty under the window of the hall in Crooked Lane, noticeably for the first time in weeks of these exercises. The world shrank, for Laura, to the compass of the kerosene lamps ; there was no gaze from its wider sphere against which she must key herself to in- difference. When on the second and third evening she was equally undisturbed, it was borne in upon her that either she or Mr. Arnold, or both, had pre- vailed, and she offered up thanks. On the fourth she reflected recurrently and anxiously that it was not after all a very glorious victory if the devil had carried ofl" the wounded ; if Lindsay, after all the THE PATH OF A STAR 155 opportunities that liad been his, should slip back- without profit to the level from which she had striven — they had all striven — to lift him. Mrs. Sand, not satisfied to be buffeted by such speculations, sent a four-anna bit to the head bearer at the club on her own account and obtained information. Alicia saw no immediate privilege in the complica- tion, though the circumstances taken together did present a vulgar opportunity which Mrs. Barberry came for hours to take advantage of. There were the usual two nurses as well as Mrs. Barberry; Alicia could take the Arab farther afield than ever, and she did. One can imagine her cantering fast and far with a sense of conscious possession in spite of Mrs. Barberry and the two nurses. There may be a certain solace in the definite and continuous know- ledge available about a person hovering on the brink of enteric under your own roof-tree. It was as grave as that ; Surgeon-Major Livingstone could not make up his mind. Alicia knew only of this uncertainty ; other satisfactions were reserved for the nurses and Mrs. Barberry. She could see that her brother was anxious, he was so uniformly cheerful, so brisk and fresh and good-tempered coming from Lindsay's room in the morning, to say at breakfast that the tempera- ture was the same, hadn't budged a point, must manage to get it down somehow in the next twenty-four hours, and forthwith to envelop himself in the newspapers. Those arbitrary and obstinate figures, which stood for apprehension to the most casual ear, stamped them- selves on most things as the day wore on, and at tea-time Mrs. Barberry gave her other details, thinking her rather cold in the reception of them. But she plainly preferred to be out of it, avoiding the nurses on the stairs, refraining from so much as a glance at the boiled milk preparations of the butler. " And 156 THE PATH OF A STAR you know," said Mrs. Barberry, rccoiintant, " how these people have to be watched." To Mrs. l^arberry she was really a conundrum, only to be solved on the theory of a perfectly preposterous delicacy. There was .so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone's conduct as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either by this exacjt^eration or by an equally hectic .scruple about her right to take care of her guest, such a right dwindling curiously when it has been given in the highest to somebody else. These pangs and penalties may have visited her in their proportion, but they did not take the importance of motives. She rather stood aside with folded hands, and in an infinite terror of prejudicing fate, devoured her heart by way of keeping its heating normal. Perhaps, too, she had a vision of a final alternative to Lindsay's marriage, one can imagine her forcing her- felf to look at it. Remove herself as she chose, Alicia could not avoid passing Lindsay's room, for her own lay beyond it. In the seven o'clock half light of a February evening, in the middle of the week, she went along the matted upper hall on tiptoe, and stumbled over a veiled form squatted in the native way, near his door, profoundly asleep. " Ayah ! " she exclaimed, but the face that looked confusedly up at her was white, whiter than common, Captain Filbert's face. Alicia drew her hand away and made an imperceptible movement in the direction of her skirts. She stood silent, stricken in the dusk with astonishment, but the sense that was strongest in her was plainly that of having made a criminal discovery. Laura stumbled upon her feet, and the two faced each other for an instant, words held from them equally by the authority of the sick- room door. Then Alicia beckoned as imperiously as if the other had in fact been the servant she took her SIIK SrUOI) SI1.I.M. sriilCKKN Willi ASruNISHMKNl THE PATH OF A STAR 157 for, and Laura followed to where, farther on, a bedroom door stood opjn, which presently closet! upon them both. It was a spaci( us room, with pale high-hung draperies, a scent of flowers, such things as an etching of Greuze, an ivory and ebony crucifix over the bed. Captain Filbert remembered the crucifix afterward with a feeling almost intense, also some silver-backed brushes on the toilet-table. Across the open window a couple of bars of sunset glowed red and gold, and a tall palm of the garden cut all its fronds sharply against the light. "Well?" said Alicia, when the door was shut. Captain Filbert put out a deprecating hand. " I intended to ask if you had any objection, miss, but you had gone out. And the nurse was in the room ; I couldn't get to her. There was nobody but the servants about." " Objection to what ? " "To my being there. I came to pray for Mr. Lindsay.'* " Did you make any noise?" Miss Filbert looked profes'^ionally touched. " It was silent prayer, of course," she said. Alicia, standing with one hand upon the toilet-table, had an air of eagerness, of successful capture. The yellow sky in the window behind her made filmy lights round her hair, and outlined her tall figure, in the gracefulness of which there was a curious crisped effect, like a conventional pose taken easily, from habit. Laura Filbert thought she looked like a princess. " I seem to hear of nothing but petitions," she said. " Isn't somebody praying for you ? " The blood of any saint would have risen in false testimony at such a suggestion. Laura blushed so violently that for an instant the space between them seemed full of the sound of her protest. j iM in-1 la>^^-, ciiiv.1 iin^ u^ ll t 158 THE PATH OF A STAR " I hope so, miss," she said, and looked as if for cahninjT over Ah'cia's shoulder away into the after- sunset bars along the sky. The colour sank back out of her face, and the light from the window rested on it ethereally. The beautiful mystery drew her eyes to seek, and their blue seemed to deei)en and dilate, as if the old splendour of the uplifted golden gates rewarded them. " Why do you use that odious word ?" Alicia ex- plained. "You are not my maid! Don't do it again — don't dream of doing it again !" " I — I don't know." The girl was still plainly covered with confusion at being found in the house uninvited. " I suppose I forgot. Well, good-evening," and she turned to the door. "Don't go," Alicia commanded. "Don't. You never come to see me now. Sit down." She dragged a chair forward and almost pushed Laura into it. " I will sit down too — what am I thinking of?" Laura reflected for a moment, looking at her folded hands. " I might as well tell you," she said, " that I have not been praying that Mr. Lindsay should get better. Only that he should be given time to find salvation and die in Jesus." " Don't— don't say those things to me. How light you are — it's wicked !" Alicia returned with vehemence, and then as Captain Filbert stared, half comprehend- ing, " Don't you care ? " she added curiously. It was so casual that it was cruel. The girl's eyes grew wider still during the instant she fixed them upon Alicia in the effort of complete understanding. Then her lip trembled. " How can I care ? " she cried ; " how can I ? " and burst into weeping. She drew her sari over her face and rocked to and fro. Her dusty bare foot protruded from her cotton skirt. She sat huddled together, her THR PATH OF A STAR 159 head in its coverings sunk between weak shaking shoulders. Alicia considered her (uv an instant as a pitiable and degraded spectacle. Then she went over and touched her. " You are completely worn out," she said, "and it is almost dinner-time. The ayah will bring you a hot bath and then you will come down and have some food quietly witn me. My brother is dining out somewhere. I will go away f(jr a little while and then I know you will feel better. And after dinner," she added gently, "you may come up if you like and pray again for Mr. Lindsa}'. I am sure he would " The faintest break in her own voice warned her, and she hurried out of the room. It was a foolish thing, and the Livingstones' old Karim liux much deplored it, but the miss-sahib had forgotten to give information that the dinner of eight commanded a fortnight ago would not take place — hence everything was ready in its sequence for this event, with a new fashion of stuffing quails and the first strawberries of the season from Dinapore. The feelings of Karim Bux in presenting these things to a woman in the dress of a coolie are not important ; but Alicia, for some reason, seemed to find the trivial incident gratifying. I I' CHAPTER XV UNDER the Greek porch of Number Ten, Middle- ton Street, in the white sunh'ght between the shadows of the stucco pillars, stood a flaj^rant ticca- gharry. The driver lay extended on the top of it, asleep, the syce squatted beneath the horse's nose, and fed it perfunctorily with hay from a bundle tied under the vehicle bthind. A fringe of palms and ferns in pots ran between the pillars, and orchids hung from above, shutting out the garden where heavy scents stood in the sun, and mynas chattered on the drive. The air was full of ease, waim,/;^///- lante^ abandoned to the lavish energy of growing things ; beyond the discoloured wall of the com- pound rose the tender c^oud of a leafing tamarisk against the blue. A long time already the driver had slept immovably, and the horse, uncomplaining but uninterested, had draggt at the wisps of hay. Inside there was no k.iger a hint of Mrs. liarberry, even a dropped handkerchief agreeably scented. The night nurse had realised herself equally superfluous and had gone ; the other, a person of practical views, could hardly retain her indignation at being kept from day to day to see her ^ atient fed, and hand him books and v.riting materials. She had not even the duty of debarring visitors, but sat most of the time in the dressing- room where echoes feh abour her of the stories with IGO THE PATH OF A STAR i6i which riotous youti^ men, in tea and '^eat and jute, hastened Mr. Lindsay's convalescen ' There she tapped her energetic fat foot on the floor in vain, to express her views upon such waste of scientific training. She had Surgeon -Major Livingstone's orders ; and he on this occasion had his sister's. There was an air of rehef, of tension relaxed, between the two women in the drawini^^-room ; it was plain that Alicia had communicated these things to her visitor, in their main import. Hilda was already half disengaged from the subject, her eye wandered as if in search for the avenue to another. By a sudden inclination Alicia began the story of Laura Filbert on her knees at Liiulsa}'s door. She told it in a cjuiet, steady, colourless way, pursuing it to the end — it came with the ease of frequent private rehearsals — and then with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her palms she stopped and gazed meditatively in front of her. There was something in the gaze to which Hilda yielded 2^^ attention unexpectedly serious, something of the absolute in character and life impervious to her inquiry. Yet to analysis it was only the grey look of eyes habituated to regard the future with penetration and to find nothing there. "Have you told him?" Hilda asked after an instant's pause, during which she conceded some- thing, she hardly knew what ; she meant to find out later. " I haven't seen him. But I will tell him, I promise you." " I have no doubt you will ! But don't promise me. I won't even witness the vow ! " Hilda cried. "What does it matter? I shall certainly t( 11 him." The words fell definitely like pebbles. Hilda thoughtfully picked them up. II i62 TIIF. PATH OF A STAR 1. 1 •I , " On the whole," she said, " perhaps it would be as well. Yes, it is my advice. It is quite likely that he will be revolted. It may be curative." Alicia turned away her head to hide the faint frown that nevertheless crept into her voice. " I don't think so," she said. " How you do ju^ijle with things! I don't know why I talk to you about t'nis — this matter. I am sure I ou<(ht not." " I was i^oin^^ to say," pursued Hilda, indifferent to her scruple, *' that I shouldn't be at all surprised if his illness leaves him quite emotionally sane. The poison has worked itself out of his blood — perhaps the passion and the poison were the same." "I wonder!" Alicia said. She said it mechanic- ally, as the easiest comment. *' When I knew you first your speculati(jn would have been more active, my dear. You would have looked into the possibility and disputed it. What has become of your modernity?" It w.'ts the tenderest malice, but it obtained no concessive sign. Alicia seemed to weigh it. " I think I like theories better than illustrations," she said in defence. "One can look at theories as one K oks at the sky, but an illustration wants a careful point of view. Iu)r this one perhaps you are a little near." " Perhaps," Alicia assented, '* I ain a little near." She glanced quickly down as she spoke, but when she raised her eyes they were dry and clear. " I can see it better," Hilda went on, with immense audacity, "much belter." " Isn't it safer to feel?" "/(i;/i(i/s lie la vie ! The nerves lie always." They were on the edge of the vortex of the old dispute. Alicia leaned back among the cushions and regarded the other with an undecided (ye. ! I Tin: PATH OF A STAR 163 ise "You are not sure," said Hilda, " tliat you vvt^i't ask me, at this point, to look at the pictures in that old copy of the Persian classic — I forget its lovely name — or inquire what sort of house we had last niyht. Well, don't be afraid of hurting- my feelings. Only, you know, between us as between more tloubtful people, the door must be either open or shut. I fancy you take cold easily ; perhaps )ou had better shut the door." " Not for worlds," Alicia said, with promptitude. Then she added, rather cleverly, " That would be spoiling my one view of life." Hilda smiled. "Isn't there any life where ) oil live?" She glanced round her, at the tai)estried elegance of the room, with sudden indifference. "After all," she said, "I don't know what 1 am doing here, in your affairs. As the world swings no one could be more remote from them or you. 1 belong to its winds and its highways — how have you brought me here, a tramp - actress, to your drawing-room?" Alicia laid a detaining hand upon Miss Howe's skirt. " Don't go away," she said. Hilda sat at the other end of the sofa; there was hardly a foot bwtween them. She went on with a curious excitement. "My kind of life is so primitive, so simple; it is one pure imj)ulse, )'ou don't know. One only asks the things tliat minister — one goes and finds and takes them; one's feet in the straw, one's head uiuler any roof What difference does it make? The only thing that counts, that rules, is the ch.iiice of seeing something else, feeling something more, doing something better." Alicia only looked at her and tightened the grasp of her fingers on the actress's skirt. Hilda made the ■ I ll! :f:i I I I I I I ■■ 164 THE PATH OF A STAR slightest, most involuntary movement. It compre- hended the shaking off of hindrance, the action of flight. Then she glanced about her again with a kind of appraisement, which ended with Alicia and embraced her. What she realised seemed to urge her, I think, in some weak place of her sex, to go on intensely, almost fiercely. " Everything here is aftermath. You are a gleaner, Alicia Livingstone. We leave it all over the world for people of taste, like you, in the glow of their illusions. I couldn't make you understand our harvest ; it is of the bruad sun and the sincerity of things." " I know I must seem to you dreadfully out of it," Alicia said, wearing, as it were, across her heaviness a lighter cloud of trouble. But the other would not be stayed ; she followed by compulsion her impulse to the end. *' Shall I be quite candid?" she said. "I find the atmosphere about you, dear, a trifle exhausted." Alicia with a face of astonishment made a half movement towards the wind.jw before she under- stood. There was some timidity in her glance at Hilda and in her mechanical smile. "Oh," she said, *' I see what you mean ; and I don't wonder. I am so literal^ — I have so little imagination." " Don't talk of it as if it were money or fabric — something you could add up or measure," Hilda cried remorselessly. " You have none ! " As if something slipped from her Alicia threw out locked hands. " At least I had enough to know you when you came ! " she cried. " I felt you, too, and it's not my fault if there isn't enough of me to — to respond properly. And I can't give you up. You seem to be the one valuable thing that I can have — the only permanent fact that is left." THE PATH OF A STAR 165 ^ou Hilda had a rebound of immense discomfort. " Who said anything about giving up ? " she interrupted. " Why, you did ! But I'm quite willing to believe you didn't mean it, if you say so." She turned the appeal of her face and saw a sudden pitiful con- sideration in Hilda's, and as if it calietl them forth two tears sprang to her eyes and fell, as she lowered her delicate head upon her lap. " Dear thing ! I didn't indeed. If I meant any- thing it was that I'm overstrung. I've been horrib!\' harried lately." She possessed herself of one of Alicia's hands and stroked it. Alicia kept her head bent for a moment and then let it fall, in sudden abandonment, upon the other woman's shoulder. Her defences crumbled so utterly that Hilda felt guilty of using absurdly heavy artillery. They sat together for a moment or two in silence with only that supervening sense of successful aggression between them, and the humiliation was Hilda's. Presently it grew heavy, embarrassing. Alicia ^ot up and began a slow, restless pacing up and down before the alcove they sat in. Hilda watched her — it was a rhythmic progress and when she came near with a sound of bruslvng silk and a faint fragrance which .seemed a personal emanation, drew a long breath as if she were an essence to be inhaled, and so, in a manner obtained, assimilated. " Oh >'es," Miss Livingstone said, rehabilitating herself with a smile, ** I must keep }'ou. I'll do 1} - thing you like to m.tke m)self more- — worth ..aile. I'll read for the pure idea. I think I'll take up modelling. There's \atiier a gocjd man here just now." " Yes," Hilda assented. ' Read for the pure idea — take up modelling. It is most expedient, especially 1 66 THE PATH OF A STAR 1 i if you mnny. Women who like those tilings somc- timts have Ljeiiiiises for sons. lUit for me, so far as I count -oh, my dear, do nothinij more. Y(.u are already an achieved effect — a consummation of the exquisite in every way. Generations have been chi)sen among for you ; your person holds the inheritance of all that is frracious and tender and discriminating in a hundred years. You are as rare as I am, and if there is an)'thing you would take from me, I would make irnn'c than one exchange for the mere iiiceness of your fibre — the feeling you have for fine shades of morality and taste — all that makes you a lady, my dear." " Such niminy piminy things," said Alicia, con- tradicting the light of satisfaction in her eyes. The sound of a step came from the room o\erhead, and the light died out. " And what good do they do me ? " she cried in soft misery. " What good do they do me 1 " " Considerably less than they ought. Why aren't you up there now? What simple, honester oppor- tunity do you want than a sick-room in your own house ? " Alicia, with a frij;htened glance at the ceiling, flew to her side. " Oh, hush ! " she cried. '* Go on ! " '* It ought to be there beside him, the charm of you. The room should be full of cool refreshing hints of what you are. Your profile should come between him and the twilight with a scent of violets." *' It sounds like a plot," Alicia murmured. "It is a plot. Why quibble about it? If you smile at him it's a plot. If you put a rose in your hair it's a deep - laid scheme, deeper than you perceive — the scheme the universe is built on. We wouldn't have lent ourselves to the arrangement, we women, if we had been consulted ; we're naturally TIIK PATH OF A STAR 167 of too scrupulous, but nobody asked us. ' Without our aid He did iis m.ikc,' you know." " J^ut— ckliburatcl)'- to ^o so far! I couldn't, I couldn't, even if I could." Hilda leaned back in her corner with her arms extended along the back and the end of the sofa. Her hands drooped in their vij^our, her knees were crossed, and her skirts draped them in long sirnple lines. In her synnuetry and strength and the warm cloud of her hair and the soul that sat behind the shadows of her eyes Vedder might have drawn her as a tragic symbol for the poet who sang what he sometimes thought of wine and death and roses. " I would go farther," she said, and looked as if some other thing charged with sweetness had come before her. " And even if one gained, one would never trust one's success," Alicia faltered. "Ah, if one gained one would hold," Hilda said; and while she smiled on her pupil in the arts of life, the tenderness grew in her eyes and came upon her lips. Her thought turned inward absently; it embraced with sweet irony, a picture of poverty, chastity, obedience. As if she knew her betrayal already complete, " I wish I had such a chance," she said. *' You wish )'ou had such a chance ! " " I didn't mean to tell you — you have enough to do to work out your own problem ; but " She seemed to find a joy in hesitating, to kcej) back the wortls as a miser might keep back gold. She let her secret escape throui^h her eyes instead. She was deliberately radiant and silent. Alicia looked at her as they might have looked, across the desert, at a mirage of the IVomised Land. " Then after all he has prevailed," she said. i68 THE PATH OF A STAR " Who ? " " Hamilton Bradley." Hilda laughed — the laugh was full and light and spontaneous, as if all the training of the notes of her throat came unconsciously to make it beautiful. " How you will hold me to my victierl' she said. " Hamilton Hradley has given up trying." " Then " " Then think ! Be clever. Be very clever." Alicia dropped her head in the joined length of her hands. A turquoise on one of them made them whiter, more transparent than usual. Presently she drew her face up from her clinging fingers and searched the other woman with eyes that never- theless refused confirmation for their astonish- ment. "Well? ".said Hilda. " I can think of no one — there is no one — except — oh, it's too absurd ! Not Stephen — poor dear Stephen ! " The faintest shadow drifted across Hilda's face, as if for an instant she contemplated a thing inscrutable. Then the light came back, dashed with a gravity, a gentleness. "I admit the absurdity. Stephen — poor dear Stephen. How odd it seems," she went on, while Alicia gazed, " the announcement of it — like a thing born. But it is that — a thing born." " I don't understand — in the least," Alicia exclaimed. " Neither do I. I don't indeed. Sometimes I feel like a creature with its feet in a trap. The insane, insane improbability of it ! " She laughed again. It was delicioi'«; to hear her. " But — he is a priest ; " " Much more difficult. He is a saint." THE PATH OF A STAR 169 Alicia glanced at the floor. The record of another lighter moment twitched itself out of a day that was forgotten. " Are you cjuite certain ? " she said. " You told me once that — that there had been other times." *' They are use ful, those foolish episodes. They explain to one the difference." The tone of this was very even, very usual, but Alicia was aware of a suggestion in it that accused her of aggression, that almost ranged her hostile. She hurried out of that position. " If it were possible," she said, frowning at her embarrassment. "I see nothing — nothing really against it." " I should think not ! Can't you conceive what I could do for him ? " " And what could he do for you?" Alicia' asked, with a flash of curiosity. " I don't think I can let you ask me that." " There are such strange things to consider ! Would he withdraw from the Church? Would you retire from the stage? I don't know which seisms the more impossible ! " Hilda got up. " It would be a criminal choice, wouldn't it? " she said. " I haven't made it out. And he, you know, still dreams only of Bengali souls for redemption, never of me at all." A servant of the house with the air of a messenger brought Alicia a scrap of paper. She glanced at it, and then, with hands that trembled, began folding it together. •* He has been allowed to get up and sit in a chair," she murmured, " and he wants me to come and talk to him." "Well," said Hilda. "Come." ■I! ! 170 THE PATH OF A STAR She put her arm about Ah'cia, and drew her out of the room to the foot of the stairs. They went in silence, saying nothing even when they parted, and Alicia, of her own accord, began to ascend. Half- way up she paused and looked down. Hilda turned to meet her glance, and something of primitive puissance passed, conscious, comprehended, between the eyes of the two women. Ml I 11; I of in nd If- ed ve en m m HK FOUND HIS SISTER IN THE ACT OP REPLACING A VOMME Ur<»N ITS I'H(»l'KSSlnNAL SHELF. CHAPTER XVI FOR three days there had certainly been, with the invalid, no sign of anything but convalescence. An appetite to cry out upon, a chartered tendency to take small liberties, to make small demands ; such in- dications offered themselves to the eye that looked for other betrayals. There had been opportunities — even the day nurse had gone, and Lindsay came to tea in the drawing-room — but he seemed to prefer to talk about the pattern in the carpet, or the corpulence of the khansamah, or things in the newspapers. Alicia once, at a suggestive point, put almost a visible question into a silent glance, and Lindsay asked her for some more sugar. Surgeon- Major Livingstone, coming into his office unexpectedly one morning, found his sister in the act of replacing a volume upon its professional shelf It was somebody on the pathology of Indian fevers. Hilda's theory lacked so little to approve it — only technical corroboration. It might also be considered that, although Laura had expressly received the freedom of the city for intercessional or any other purpose, she did not come again. They may have heard in Crooked Lane that Duff was better. We may freely imagine that Mrs. Sand was informed ; it looked as if the respite to disinterested anxiety afforded by his recovery had been taken advantage of. Lindsay was to be given time for more dignified repentance; 171 I ' '' 172 THE PATH OF A STAR III llill! I' I II I ; they might now very well hand him over, Alicia thought, smiling, to the Archdeacon. As a test, as something to reckon by, the revela- tion to Lindsay still in prospect, of the single visit Captain Filbert did make, was perhaps lacking in essentials. It would be an experiment of some intricacy, it might very probably work out in shades. So much would infallibly have to be put down for surprise and so much reasonably for displeasure, without any prejudice to the green hope budding underneath ; the key to Hilda's theory might very well be lost in contingencies. Nevertheless, Alicia postponed her story, from day to day and from hour to hour. If her ideas about it — she kept them carefully in solution — could have been precipitated, they might have appeared in a formula favourite with her brother the Surgeon-Major, who often talked of giving nature a chance. She told him finally on the morning of his first drive. They went together and alone, Alicia taking her brother's place in the carriage at a demand for him from the hospital. It was seven o'clock, and the morning wind swept soft and warm from over the river. There was a white light on all the stucco parapets, and their shadows slanted clear and delicately purple to the west. The dust slept on the broad roads of the Maidan, only a curling trace lifted itself here and there at the heel of a cart- bullock, and nothing had risen yet of the lazy tumult of the streets that knotted themselves in the city. From the river, curving past the statue of an Indian administrator, came a string of country .people with baskets on their heads. The sun struck a vivid note with the red and the saffron they wore, turned them into an ornamentation, in the profuse Oriental taste, of the empty expanse. There was the completest I ! THE PATH OF A STAR 173 cia ila- 'isit r in > des. for iurc, diiv^ very Llicia hour them :ated, )urite often first aking id for and over tucco and pt on tra'^e cart- umult city, ndian e with d note them taste, ipletest freedom in the wide tree-dotted spaces round which the city gathered her shops and her palaces, the fullest invitation to disburden any heaviness that might oppress, to give the wings of words to any joy that might rebel in prison. The advantage of the intimacy of the landau for purposes of observation was so obvious that one imagines Alicia must have been aware of it, though as a matter of fact when she finally told Lindsay she did not look at him at all, but beyond the trees of the Eden Gardens, where the yellow dome of the post-office swelled against the morning sky ; and so lost it. He heard without exclamation, but stopped her now and then with a question. On what day precisely ? And how long ? And afterwards ? The yellow dome was her anchor ; she turned her head a little, as the road trended the other way, to keep her eyes upon it. There was an endless going round of wheels, and trees passed them in mechanical succes- sion ; a tree, and another tree ; some of them had flowers on them. When he broke the silence afterwards she started as if in apprehension, but it was only to say something that anybody might have said, about the self-sacrificing energy of the organisa- tion to which Miss Filbert belonged. Her assent was little and meagre ; nothing would help her to expand it. The Salvation Army rose before her as a mammoth skeleton, without a suggestive bone. Presently he said in a different way, as if he uttered an unguarded thought, " I had so little to make me think she cared." There was in it that phantom of speculation and concern which a sick man finds under pressure, and it penetrated Alicia that he abandoned himself to his invalid's privileges as if he valued them. He lay extended beside her among his cushions and wraps ; she tried to look at 174 THE PATH OF A STAR I ' i: l| I Ml l> i I 1 i I ! him, and got as far as the hand nearest her, ungloved and sinewy, on the plaid of the rug. " She told me it was not for your life she had been praying — only that if you di'jd you might be saved first." Her eyes were still on his hand, and she saw the fingers close into the palm as if by an impulse. Then they relaxed again, and he said, " Oh, well," and smiled at the balancings of a crow drinking at a city conduit. That was all. Alicia made an effort, odd and impossible enough, to postpone her impressions, even her emotions. In the meantime it was some- thing to have got it over, and she was able at a bound to talk about the commonplaces of the roadside. In her escape from this oppression, she too gathered a freshness, a convalescent pleasure in what they saw ; everything had in some way the likeness of the leafing teak-trees, tender and curative. In the broad early light that lay over the tanks there was a vague allurement, almost a presage, and the wide spaces of the Maid an made room for hope. She asked Lindsay presently if he would mind driv- ing to the market ; she wanted some flowers for that night. I think she wanted some flowers for that hour. Her thought broke so easily into the symbol of a rose They turned into Chowringhee, where the hibiscus bushes showed pink and crimson over the stucco walls, and at the gates of the pillared houses servants with brown and shining backs sat on their haunches in the sun and were shaved. Where the street ran into shops there was still a shuttered blankness, but here and there a doorkeeper yawned and stretched himself before an open door, and a sweeper made a cloud of dust beneath a commercial verandah. The first hoarding in a side street announced the appear- HHce of Miss Hilda Howe for one night only as Lady THE PATH OF A STAR 175 oved ; had Kt be , and )y an " Oh, crow I and ;sions, some- ; at a )f the n, she jure in y the rative. tanks e, and hope, driv- r that t hour, a rose biscus stucco rvants nches et ran ss, but tched ade a The [Ppear- Lady Macbeth, under the kind patronage of His ILxcellency the Viceroy; with Jimmy Finiiigan in the ck)se proximity of professional jealousy, advertising five complete novelties for the same evening. It made a cheerful note which appealed to them both ; it was a pictorial combination, Hilda and Jimmy Finnigan and the Viceroy, there was something of gay burlesque in the metropolitan posters against the crumbling plaster of the outer mosque wall where Mussulmans left their shoes. Talking of Hilda they smiled ; it was a way her friends had, a testimony to the difference of her. In Alicia's smile there was a satisfaction rather subtle and in a manner superior ; she knew of things. The life of the market, the bazar, was all awake and moving. They rolled up through a crowd of in- ferior vehicles, empty for the moment and abandoned, where the leisurely crowd with calculation under its turbans, swayed about the market-house, and the pots of a palm-dealer ran out of bounds and made a little grove before the stall of the man who sold pith helmets. The warm air held the smell of all sorts of commodities ; there was a great hum of small transactions, clink of small profits. " It makes one feel immensely practical and acquisitive," Duff said, looking at the loaded baskets on the coolies' heads ; and he insisted on getting out. " I am dying to buy an enormous number of desirable things very cheap. But not combs or shirt buttons,' thank you, nor any ribbons or lace — is that good lace, Miss Livingstone? Nor even a live duck — really I am difficult. We might inquire the price of the duck though." The sense of being contributive to his holiday satisfaction reigned in her. She abandoned herself to it with a little smile that played steadily about her lips, as if it would tell him without her sanction, I i' 'i l! i I I 176 THE PATH OF A STAR how continually slie rejoiced in his regained weli- being. They made their way slowly toward the flower-corner; there were so many things he wanted to stop before as they went, leaning on his slick to examine them and delighting in opportuviities for making himself quite ridiculous. The country tobacco-dealer laughed too, squatting behind his basket — it was a mad sahib, but not madder than the rest ; and there was no hurry. Alicia saw the pink glow of the roses beyond, where the sun struck across them over the shoulders of the crowd, and was content to reach them by degrees. They would be in their achieved sweetness a kind of climax to the hour's experience, and after that she was not entirely sure that the day would be as grey as other days. This was the flood - time of roses, and it was exquisite in the flower-corner with the soft wind picking up their fragrance and squares of limpid sunlight standing on the wet flagstones. Some of the stall-keepers had little glass cases, and in these there was room only for the Gloire de Dijons and the La Frances and the velvety Jacks, the rest over- ran the tables and the floor in anything that would hold them. The place rioted with the joy and the passion of roses, for buying and selling. There were other flowers, nasturtiums, cornbottles, mignonette, but they had a diminished insignificant look in their tied-up bunches beside the triumph of the roses. Farther on, beyond the cage of the money - changer, the country people were hoarse with crying their vegetables, in two green rows, and beyond that where the jostling crowd divided, shone a glimpse of oranges and pomegranates. In this part there were many comers and goers, lean Mussulman table- servants, and fat Eurasian ladies who kept boarding- houses, Armenian women with embroidered shawls THE PATH OF A STAR 177 weli- d the wanted ; slick uviities ountry id his r than aw the struck nd was )ukl be : to the entirely lys. it was ft wind hmpid lome of n these and the )ver-ran lid hold passion other 3ut they tied-up Farther Iger, the their id that gHmpse rt there in table- oarding- shawls re drawn over their heads, sailors of the port. They came to pass that way, through the sweetness of it, and this made a coign of vantage for the men with trays who were very persecuting there. Lindsay and Alicia stood together beside the roses, her hands were deep in them, he perceived with pleasure that their glow was reflected in her face. " No," she exclaimed with dainty aplomb to the man who sat cross - legged in muslin draperies on the table. " These are certainly of yesterday. There is no scent left in them — and look!" she held up the bunch and shook it, a shower of pink petals and drops of water fell upon the round of her arm above the wrist where the laces of her sleeve slipped back. Lindsay had something like a poetic appreciation of her, observing her put the bunch down tenderly as if she would not, if she could help it, find fault with any rose. The dealer drew out another, and handed it to her ; a long-stemmed, wide-open, perfect thing, and it was then that her glance of delight, wandering, fell upon Laura Filbert. Lindsay looked instantly, curiously in the same direction, and Alicia was aware that he also saw. There ensued a terse moment with a burden of silence and the strangest misgivings, in which he may have imagined that he had his part alone, but which was the heavier for her because of him. These two had seen the girl before only under circumstances that suggested protection, that made excuse, on a platform receiving the respect of attention, marching with her fellows under common conventions, common orders. Here, alone, slipping in and out among the crowd, she looked abandoned, the sight of her in her bare white feet and the travesty of her dress was a wound. Her humility screamed its violation, its debasement of her race ; she woke the impulse to screen her and hurry 12 II i! i'l i I 11 li i II n\\\' II I ■ 1 I ' I I ) i i ! 178 TIIK PATH OF A STAR her away as if she were a woman walking in her sleep. She had on her arm a sheaf of the IVar Cry. This was another indii^iiity ; she offered them right and left, no one had a pice for her except one man, a sailor, who refused the paper. WHien he rejoined his companions there was a hoarse laugh, and the others turned their heads to look after her. The flower dealer eyed his customers with con- temptuous speculation, seeing what had claimed their eyes. There was nothing new, the " mem " passed every day at this hour. She did no harm and no good. He, too, looked at her as she came closer, offering her paper to Ailadiah Khan, a man impatient in his religion, who refused it, mumbling in his beard. With a gesture of appeal she pressed it on him, saying something. Then Alladiah's green turban shook, his beard, dyed red in Mecca, waggled ; he raised his arm, and Laura in white astonishment darted from under it. They seldom did that. Alicia caught at the stall table and clung to it, as Lindsay made his stride forward. She saw him twist his hand in the beard of Mecca and fling the man into the road ; she was aware of a vague thank- fulness that it ended there, as if she expected blood- shed. More plainly she saw the manner of Duff's coming back to the girl and the way in which, with a look of half- frightened satisfaction, Laura gave herself up to him. He was hurrying her away with- out a word. Her surrender was as absolute and final as if she had been one of those desirable things he said he wanted to buy. Alicia intercepted, as it were, the indignity of being forgotten, stepping up to them. " Take her home in the carriage," she said to Duff, "and send it back for me. I shall be here a long time still — quite a long time." She stared at Captain Filbert as she spoke, but made no answer to 'I'llE PATH OJ. A STAR ,yg the "Goofl-morninK! God bless y„u ! " with which hcs,',rl |KMr,MKlo,ilyacl,lrcs.scm tlie minuet he had danced the week before, in ruffles and i)atches, with tlie daugliter of the ('ominander- in - Chief. Duff got out of the way to enable the newly introduced Head o( the Department of Education to inform Miss Howe that he never went to the theatre in Calcutta himself, it was much too badly ventilated ; and Stephen Arnold arriving late, shot like an embarrassed arrow through the company to Alicia's side, and was still engaged there in grieved explanation when dinner was announced. There were pink water-lilies, and Stephen said grace — those were the pictorial features. Half of the people had taken their seats when he began ; there was a hasty scramble, and a decorous half- checked smile. Hilda, at the first word of the brief formula, blushed hotly ; then she stood while he spoke, with bowed head and clasped hands like a reverently inclining statue. Her long lashes brushed her cheek ; she drew a kind of isolation from the way her manner underlined the office. The civilian's wife, with a side-glance, settled it off-hand that she was absurdly affected ; and indeed to an aculer intelligence it might have looked as if she took, with the artistry of habit, a cue that was not offered. That was the one instant, however, in which the civilian's wife, observing the actress, was gratified ; and it was so brief that she complained afterwards that Miss Howe was disappointing. She certainly went out of her way to be normal. Since it was her daily business to personate exceptional individuals, it seemed to be her pleasure that night to be like everybody else. She did it on opulent lines ; there was a richness in her agreement that the going was as hard as iron on the Ellenborough course, and a ! (' .'■:'t! 'III m i iiijiiliii Mir: ili! :: :: li*. I ! I !l ijj i J'i i il 'I I! '!: 11: II {< illll 'I lllil r 196 THE PATH OF A STAR soft ingenuousness in her inquiries about punkahs and the brain-fever bird that might have aroused suspicion, but after a brief struggle to respond to the unusualness she ought to have represented, AHcia's guests gratefully accepted her on their own terms instead. She expanded in the light and the glow and the circumstance ; she looked with warm pleasure at the orchids the men wore and the jewelled necks of the women. The social essence of Alicia's little dinner-party passed into her, and she moved her head like the civilian's wife. She felt the champagne investing her chatter and the chatter of the 1 lead of the Department of Kducation with the most satis- fying qualities, which were oddly stimulated when she glanced over the brim of her glass at Stephen, sitting at the turn of the oval, giving a gravely humble but perfunctory attention to Mrs. 1 barberry, and drinking water. The occasion grew before her into a gorgeous flower, living, pulsating, and in the heart of its light and colour the petals closed over her secret, over him, the unconscious priest with the sloping shoulders, thinking of abstinence and listening to Mrs. Barberry. It transpired when the men came up that there was no unanimity about going to Government House. The Livingstones craved the necessity of absence, if anyone would supply it by staying on ; it would be a boon they said, and cited the advance- iient of the season. " One gets to bed so much earlier," Surgeon-Major Livingstone urged, at which Alicia raised her eyebrows and everybody laughed. Lindsay elected to gratify them, with the proclaimed purpose of seeing how long Livingstone could be kept up, and the civilian pair agreed, apparently from a tendency to remain seated. The A.D.C. had, of course, to go; duty called him; and he declared a THE PATH OF A STAR 197 there ment ty of I on ; ^ance- much which ghed. aimed Id be rently . had, red a sense of sli,L;hted hos[)itaIity that anybody should remain behind. " Besides, " he cried, with in- genuous privilej^e, "who's goin' to chaperone Mis^ Howe ? " Hilda stood in the midst. Tall, in viole. velvet, she had a flush that made her magnificent ; her eyes were deep and soft. It was patent that she was out of proportion to the other women, body and soul ; there was altogether too much of her; and it was only the men, when Captain Corby spoke, who looked silently responsive. " We're coming away so early," said Mrs. Barberry, buttoning her glove. Hilda had begun to smile, and, indeed, the situation had its humour, but there was also behind her eyes an appreciation of another sort. " Don't," she said to Alicia, in the low, quick reach of her prompting tone, as if the other had mistaken her cue, but the moment hardly permitted retreat, and Alicia turned an unflinching graceful front to the laily in the Department of Education. " Then 1 think I must ask you," she said. The educational husband was standing so near Hilda that she got the very dregs of the glance of consternation his little wife gave him as she rejjlied, a trifle red and stiff, that she was sure she would be delighted. " Nobody suggests we ! " exclaimed Captain Corby resentfully. They were gathered in the hall, the carriages were driving to the open door, the Barberry's glistening brougham whisking them off, and then the battered vehicle in Hilda's hire. It had an air of ludicrous forlornness, with its damaged paint and its tied-up harness. Hilda, when its door closed upon the purple vision of her, might have been a modern Cinderella in mid-stage of backward transformation. " I could chaperone you all ! " she cried gaily back d ■■■'"ii! I m i !i! 11 I'! ! 198 THE PATH OF A STAR at them, as she passed clown the steps ; and in the relief of Ihc gei.eral exclamation it seemed reasonable enough that Stephen Arnold should lean into the i,diarry to see that she was quite comfortable. The unusual thin!;! II 200 THE PATH OF A STAR suitably impressed eyebrow and nods of considerate assent. Hilda carried him along, as it were, in their direction. She was full that night of a triumphant sense of her own vitality, her success and value as a human unit. There was that in her blood which assured her of a welcome, it had logic in it, with the basis of her rarity, her force, her dis- tinction among other women. She pressed forward to human fellowship with a smile on her lips, as a delightful matter of course, going towards the people who were not indifferent to the fact that she was there, who could not be entirely, since they had some sort of knowledge of her. In no case did they ignore her, but they were so cheerfully engaged in conversation that they were usually quite oblivious of her. She encountered this animated absorption two or three times, then turning she found that the absorbed ones had changed their places — were no longer in her path. One lady put herself at a safe distance and then bowed, with much cordiality. It was extraordinary in a group of five how many glistening shoulders would be presented, quite without offence, to her approach. Mrs. Winstick had hidden behind the Superintendent of Stamps and Stationery, to whom she was explaining, between spoonfuls of straw- berry ice, her terrible situation. And from the lips of another lady whose face she knew, she heard after she had passed, " Don't you think it's rather an omnium gatherum}" It was like Hilda Howe to note at that moment with serious interest, how the little world about them had the same negative attitude for the missionary priest beside her, presenting it with a hardly perceptible difference. Within its limits there was plainly no room for him either. His acquaint- THE PATH OF A STAR 201 inary Iders her the A'hom traw- the she it's ances — he had a few — bowed with the kind of respect which implies distance, and in the wandering eyes of the others it was plain that he did not exist. She saw, too, with a very delicate pleasure, that he carried himself in his grave humility untouched and unconscious. Expecting nothing he was unaware that he received nothing. It was odd, and in its way charming, that she who saw and knew drew from their mutual grievance a sense of pitiful protection for him, the unconscious one. For herself, the tide that bore her on was too deep to let these things hurt her, she looked down and saw the soreness and humiliation of them pictorially, at the bottom, gliding smoothly over. They brought no stereotype to her smile, no dissonance to what she found to say. When at last she and Arnold sat down together her standpoint was still superior, and she herself was so aloof from it all that she could talk about it without bitterness, divorcing the personal pang from a social manifestation of some dramatic value. In offering up her egotism that way she really only made more subtle sacrifices to it, but one could hardly expect such a consideration, just then, to give her pause. She anointed his eye- lids, she made him see, and he was relieved to find in her light comment that she took the typical Mrs. Winstick less seriously than he had supposed when they drove away from the Livingstones'. It could not occur to him to correct the impression he had then by the sound of his own voice uttering sympathy. " But I know now what a wave feels like dash- ing against a cliff," she said. " Fancy my thinking I could impose myself! That is the wave's reflec- tion." " It goes back into the sea which is its own ; and i ^ ' ■:'\', m W '3^ ^ :i 1 ^ ;6 1 i ii 1 : 1 : ! '11 H'n ' ""' 202 THE PATH OF A STAR there," said the priest, whom nature had somehow cheated by the false promise of high moraHties out of an inheritance of beauty, — "and there, I think, is depth and change and mystery, with joy in the obedience of the tides and a full beating upon many shores " " Ah, my sea ! I hear it calling always, even," she said half-reflectively, " when I am talking to you. But somelimes I think I am not a wave at all, only a shell, to be stranded and left, always with the calling in my ears " She seemed to have dropped altogether into reverie, and then looked up suddenly, laughing, because he could not understand. "After all," she said practically, "what has that to do with it? One doesn't blame these people. They are stupid — that's all. They want the obvious. The Reading lady of Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope — without the smallest diamond— who does son;;^ and dance on Saturday nights — what can you expect ! If I had a great name they would be pleased enough to see me. It is one of the rewards of the fame." She was silent for a moment, and then she added, " They are very poor." " Those rewards ! I have sometimes thought," Arnold said, " that you were not devoured by thirst for them." " When we are together, you and I," she answered simply, " I never am." He took it at its face value. They had had some delightful conversations. If her words awakened anything in him it was the remembrance of these. The solace of her companionship presented itself to him again, and her statement gave their mutual confidence another .seal ; that was all. They sat where they were for half an hour, and some- Tiehow ies out link, is in the 1 m any- even, " ing to wave al ways acd to I then lid not IS that people, bvious. liope — v^ and ;xpect ! enough fame." added, ought," ed by swered d some akened " these, tself to mutual ey sat some- r, i I '. II:: l':\' i" P'l'T' i;il' i*!!!i .1 nil ! m I'i : li I •I AM GOING NOW, ■ SIIK SAID". • IT ISX'T QriTK SiriTAnLK HKHK. THE PATH OF A STAR 203 thing like antagonism and displeasure towards the secretaries' wives settled upon them, from which Hilda, interrupting a glance or two from the ladies purring past, drew suspicion. " I am going now," she said. " It — it isn't quite suitable here," and there was just enough suggestion in the point of her fan to make him think of his frock. "It is an unpardonable truth that if we stay any longer I shall make people talk about you." Me turned astonished eyes upon her, eyes in which she remembered afterwards there was absolutely nothing but a literal and pained apprehension of what she said. " You are a good woman," he ex- claimed. " How could such a thing be possible !" The faintest embarrassment, the merest suggestion of distress, came into her face and concentrated in her eyes, which she fixed upon him as if she would bring his words to the last analysis, and answer him as she would answer a tribunal. " A good woman ? " she repeated, " I don't know — isn't that a refinement of virtue? No; standing on my sex I make no claim, but as people go 1 am good. Yes, I am good." "In my eyes you are splendid," he replied, content, and gave her his arm. They went together through the reception-rooms, and the appreciation of her grew in him. If in the bright and silken distance he had not seen his Bishop it might have glowed into a cordiality of speech with his distinctive individual stamp on it. But he saw his Bishop, his ceinture tightened on him, and he uttered only the trite saying about the folly of counting on the sensibility of swine. "Yes," she laughed into her good-night to him, " but I'm not sure that it isn't better to be the pig than the pearl." ?.. I 'I' I'i'ii-' hr|l!, t .!! I! i^ I iii :«i!: CHAPTER XTX " IVT ^'^ ^^^S ^SO»" said Hilda, " I had a chat with 1 >1 him. We sat on the grass in the middle of the Madian, and there was nothing to interfere with my impressions." "What were your impressions? No!" Alicia cried. "No! Don't tell me. It is all so peaceful now, and simple, and straightforward. You think such extraordinary things. He comes here quite often, to talk about her. He is coming this after- noon. So I have impressions too — and they are just as good." " All right." Hilda crossed her knees more comfort- ably. " l^V/mt did you say the Surgeon-Major paid for those Teheran tiles ? " " Something absurd — I've forgotten. He writes to her regularly, diary letters, by every mail." " Do you tell him what to put into them ? " " Hilda, sometimes — you're positively gross." " I daresay, my dear. You didn't come out of a cab, and you never are. I like being gross, I feel nearer to nature then, but I don't say that as an excuse. I like the smell of warm kitchens and the talk of 'bus-drivers, and bread and herrings for my tea — all the low satis- factions appeal to me. Beer, too, and hand-organs." " I don't know when to believe you. He talks about her quite freely, and — and so do I. She is really interesting in her way." 20* I THE PATH OF A STAR 205 it with Idle of re with Alicia leaceful I think e quite s after- are just omfort- or paid J writes Df a cab, earer to Hike ■drivers, w satis- rgans." e talks She is " And in perspective." "Why shoukl you be odiously smart. lie and Stephen " — her glance was tentative — " have made it up." " Oh ? " "He admits now that Stephen was justified, from his point of view. ]^ut of course that is easy enough when you have come off best." " Of course." " Hilda, what do you tJi'nik} " "Oh, I think it's deplorable — you have always known what I think. Have you seen him lately — I mean your cousin ? " " He lunched with us yesterday. He was more enthusiastic than ever about you." " I wish you could tell me that he hadn't mentioned my name. I don't want his enthusiasm. The pit gives one that." "Hilda, tell me; what is your idea of^of what it ought to be ? What is the principal part of it ? Not enthusiasm — adoration ? " " Goodness, no 1 Something quite different and quite simple — too simple to explain. Besides, it is a thing that requires the complctest ignorance to dis- cuss comfortably. Do you want me to vivisect my soul? You yourself, can you talk about what most possesses you ? " " Oh," protested Alicia, " I wasn't thinking about myself," and at the same moment the door opened and Hilda said, " Ah ! Mr. Lindsay." There was a hint of the unexpected in Duff's response to Miss Howe's greeting, and a suggestion in the way he sat down that this made a difference, and that he must find other things to say. He found them with facility, while Hilda decided that she would finish her tea before sh - went. Alicia, busy .J llll sii i.ii.. fi ! ?■• !i 11 V j j 1 i 1 i' '■. 1, 1 :•' H:! 1 ': ;|H ['• 1' 1 IP i;i \i:\ '\ 'ilr' ■1 H r 1 1 M 1 > ■ i 1 W 1 |:3 I i 1 III' ! ) 1i 1 : l! 1 : 1 1 III'! 2o6 THE PATH OF A STAR with the urn, seemed satisfied to abandon them to each other, to take a decorative place in the conver- sation, interrupting it with brief inquiries about cream and sugar. AHcia waited, it was her way ; she sank almost palpably into the tapestries until some reviv- ing circumstance should bring her out again, a pro- cess which was quite compatible with her little laughs and comments. She waited, offering repose, and unconscious even of that. You know Hilda Howe as a creature of bold reflections. Looking at Alicia Livingstone behind the teapot, the conviction visited her that a sex three-quarters of this fibre explained the monastic clergy. " It is reported that you have performed the won- derful, the impossible," Lindsay said ; " that Llewellyn Stanhope goes home solvent." " I don't know how he can help it now. But I have to be very firm. He's on his knees to me to do Ibsen. I tell him I will if he'll combine with Jimmy Finnigan and bring the Surprise Party on between the acts. The only way it would go, in this capital." " Oh, do produce Ibsen," Alicia exclaimed ; " I've never seen one of his plays — doesn't it sound terrible ! " " If people will elect to live upon a coral strand — oh, I should like to, for you and Duff here, but Ibsen is the very last man to deliver to a scratch company. He must have equal merit, or there's no meaning. You see he makes none of the vulgar appeals. It would be a tame travesty — nobody could redeem it alone. You must keep to the old situations, the reliable old dodges, when you play in any part of Asia." " I never shall cease to regret that I didn't see you in The Offence of Galilee I' Duff said. " Everyone Till!: PATH OF A STAR 20; a to wcr- "cam sank eviv- , pro- lughs and we as Alicia 'isited lained ; won- vvellyn But 1 2 to do Jimmy etvveen this " I've sound ;rand — it Ibsen [mpany. leaning, kls. It leem it )ns, the part of see you Iveryone n who knows the least bit about it said you were marvellous in that. " Marvellous," said Alicia. Hilda gazed straight before her for an instant without speaking. The others looKcd at her absent eyes. "A bazar trick or tuo helped me," she said, and glanced with vivacity at any other subject that might be hanging on the wall, or visible out of the window. " And are you really invincible about not putting it on again in Calcutta?" Duff asked. " Not in Calcutta, or anywhere. The rest hate it — nobody has a chance but me," Hilda said, and got up. "Oh, I don't know," Alicia began, but Miss IIowc was already half-way out of the discussion, in the direction of the door. There was often a brusqucness in her comings and goings, but she usually left a flavour of herself behind. One turned with facility to talk about hen this being the easiest way of apply- ing the stimulus that came of talking to her. It was more conspicuous than either of these two realised that they accepted her retreat without a word, that there was even between them a consciousness of satisfaction that she had gone. " This morning's mail," said Alicia, smiling brightly at Lindsay, " brought you a letter, I know." It was extraordinary how detached she could be from her vital personal concern in him. It seemed relegated to some background of her nature while she occupied herself with the immediate play of circumstance or was lost in her observation of him. " How kind of you to think of it," Lindsay said. " This was the first by which I could possibly hear from England." " Ah, well, now you will have no more anxiety. !i n I' !!i: I' I' I '' 208 THE PATH OF A STAR Letters from on board ship are always difficult to write and unsatisfactory," Alicia said. Miss Filbert's had been postcards, with a wide unoccupied margin at the bottom. " The Sutlej seems to have arrived on the third ; that's a day later, isn't it, than we made out she would be?" Alicia consulted her memory, and found she couldn't be sure. Lindsay was vexed by a similar uncertainty, but they agreed that the date was early in the month. " Did they get comfortably through the Canal ? I remember being tied up there for forty-eight hours once." " I don't think she says, so I fancy it must have been all right. The voyage is bound to do her good. I've asked the Simpsons to watch particularly for any sign of malaria later, though. One can't possibly know what she may have imported from that slum in Bentinck Street." "And what was it like after Gibraltar?" Alicia asked, with a barely perceptible glance at the envelope edges showing over his breast-pocket. "I'll look," a;id he sorted one out. It was pink and glossy, wi:." a diagonal water-stripe. Lindsay drew out the single sheet it contained, and she could see that every line was ruled and faintly pencilled. " Let me see," said he. " To begin at the beginning. * We arrived home on the third,' — you see it was the third, — ' making very slow progress the last day on account of a fog in the Channel ' — ah, a fog in the Channel ! — ' which was a great disappointment to some on board who were impatient to meet their loved ones. One lady had not seen her family of five for seven years. She said she would like to get out and swim, and you could not wonder. She was my s — stable companion.' I » f ■ ii . ^ ■' '> «* '?' f 5i»^-sei»«5.-^v, j»®ag-*i..rf» ; t>u~stiS0m^-^.:. ' 1- .j.. i .t i n.aMi i|| j.;jii. i ^.ijiM!W r. P 'Hi' ll:*!: THE PATH OF A STAR 209 j<^'^ y 7. ■A '—^ X ■/i " Quaint ! " said Alicia. " She has picked up the expression on board. * So — so she told me this.' Oh yes. * Now that it is all over I have written the voyage down among my mercies in spite of three days' sickness, when you could keep nothing on ' What are those two words, Miss Livingstone ? I can't quite make them out." " ' Your ' — cambric ? — stem — * stomach ' — ' your stomach.' " " Oh, quite so. Thanks ! — * in the Bay of Biscay.' You see it was rough after Gib. ' Everybody was ' — yes. * The captain read Church of England prayers on Sunday mornings, in which I had no objection to join, and we had mangoes c y day for a week after leaving Ceylon.' " " Miss Filbert was so fond of mangoes," Alicia said. "Was she? 'The passengers got up two dances, and quite a number ot gentlemen invited me, but I declined with thanks, though I would not say it is wrong in itself.' " Lindsay seemed to waver ; her glance went near enough to him to show her that his face had a red tinge of embarrassment. He looked at the letter uncertainly, on the point of folding it up. "You see she hasn't danced for so loncf," Alicia put in quickly; "she would naturally hesitate about beginning a<;ain with anybody but you. I shouldn't wonder," she added gently, " if she never does, with anybody else." " I know it's an idea some women have," he replied. " I think it's rather— nice." " And her impressions of the Simpsons — and Plymouth?" "She goes on to that." He rcconsulted the letter. "'Mr. and Mrs. Simpson met me as expected and welcomed me very affably.' She has got hold of a 14 I'll )l i'l':: : ii ' r ■ t;; ^5 ,i.l!ljf illl jii ii lilli '■'• ' '<'lll'l'ffil I F,l I' i ! 'I' 11 2IO THE PATH OF A STAR wrong impression there, I fancy ; the Simpsons couldn't be 'affable.' 'They seem very kind and pleasant for such stylish people, and their house is lovely, with electric light in the parlour and hot and cold water throughout. They seem very earnest people and have family prayers regularly, but I have not yet been asked to lead. Four servants come in to prayers. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson are deeply interested in the work of the Army, though I think Plymouth as a whole is more taken up with the C.M.S. ; but we cannot have all things.' Dear me, yes! I remember those evangelical teas and the disappointment that I could not speak more definitely about the work among the Sontalis." " Fancy her having caught the spirit of the place already ! " exclaimed Alicia. He went on : * Mr. and Mrs. Simpson have a beautiful garden and grow most of their own vegetables. We sit in it a great deal and I think of all that has passed. I hope ever that it has been for the best and pray for you always. Oh that your feet may be set in the right path and that we may walk hand in hand upon the way to Zion!'" Lindsay lowered his voice and read the last sentences rapidly, as if the propulsion of the first part of the letter sent him through them. Then he stopped abruptly, and Alicia looked up. " That's all, only," he added, with an awkward smile, " the usual formula." " ' God bless you *? " she asked, and he nodded. " It has a more genuine ring than most formulas," she observed. " Yes, hasn't it ? May I have another cup ? " He restored the pink sheet to its pink envelope, and both to his breast-pocket, while she poured out the other cup, but Miss Filbert was still present with them. They went on talking about her, and entirely in THE PATH OF A STAR 2„ the tone of congratulation -the suitabnity of the Simpsons, the sn.tability of I'lymouth, the probability that she would entirely recover, in its balmy atr^os^ pheie, her divme smging voice. Plymouth certainly was m no .sense a tonic, but Miss Filbert didn't need a tome; she was too much inclined to be strung up as ,t was. What she wanted was the sooth n/ 3"f p7 '""r^" °^ J"'^' I'lymouth's meetings and 11} rr^^f^', '^^■''- -^^^ -charms that so sweetV and definitely characterised her would expand There^ . was a delightful flowery environment for them nnd she couldn't fail to improve in health, IJev'i "hide's I im t If I ! ; i cttaptp:r XX NOBODY could have been more impressed with Hilda's influence upon Mr. Llewellyn Stan- hope's commercial probity than Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope himself. He was a prey to all noble feelings ; they ruled his life and spoiled his bargains ; and gratitude, when it had a chance, which was certainly seldom in connection with leading ladies, dominated him entirely. He sat in the bar of the Great Eastern Hotel with tears in his eyes, talking about what Miss Howe had done for him, and gave unnecessary backsheesh to coolies who brought him small bills — so long, that is, as they were the small bills of this season. When they had reference to the liabilities of a former and less prosperous year he waved them away with a bitter levity which belonged to the same period. His view of his obligations was strictly chronological, and in taking it he counted, like the poet, only happy hours. The bad debt and the bad season went consistently together to oblivion; the sun of to-day's remarkable receipts could not be expected to penetrate backwards. He had only one fault to find with Miss Howe — she had no artistic conscience — none, and he found this with the utmost leniency, basking in the con- sciousness that it made his own more conspicuous. She was altogether in the grand style, if you under- stood Mr. Stanhope, but nothing would induce her to 212 ■ I 4 THE PATH OF A STAR 213 do herself justice before Calcutta ; she seemed to have taken the measure of the place and to be as indifferent ! Try to ring in anything worth doing and she was off with the bit between her teeth, and you simply had to put up with it. The second lead had a great deal more ambition, and a very good little woman in her way, too, but of course not half the talent. He was obliged to confess that Miss Howe wasn't game for risks, especially after doing her Rosalind the night the circus opened to a twenty- five rupee house. It was monstrous. She seemed to think that nothing mattered so much as that every- body should be paid on the first of the month. There was one other grievance, which Llewellyn mentioned only in confidence with a lowered voice. That was Bradley. Hilda wasn't lifting a finger to keep Bradley. Result was, Bradley was crooking his elbow a great deal too often lately and going off every way. He, Llewellyn, had put it to her if that was the way to treat a man the Daily TelegrapJi had spoken about as it had spoken about Hamilton Bradley. Where was she — where was he — going to find another? No, he didn't say marry Bradley ; there were difficulties, and after all that might be the very way to lose him. But a woman had an influence, and that influence could never be more fittingly exercised than in the cause of dramatic art based on Mr. Stanhope's com- binations. Mr. Stanhope expressed himself with a difference, but it came to that. Perhaps if you pursued Llewellyn, pushed him, as it were, along the track of what he had to put up with, you would have come upon the further fact that as a woman of business Miss Howe had no parallel for procrastination. Next season was imminent in his arrangements, as Christmas numbers are imminent to publishers at midsummer, and here she was shying Ml 214 THE PATH OF A STAR at a contract as if they had months for consideration. It wasn't cither as if she complained of anything in the terms — that would be easy enough fixed — but she said herself that it was a bigger salary than he, Llewellyn, would ever be able to pay unless she went round with the hat. Nor had she any objection to the tour — a fascinating one — including the Pacific Slope and Honolulu. It stumped him, Llewellyn, to i! I j I know what she did object to, and why she couldn't bark it out at once, seeing she must understand perfectly well it was no use his going to Bradley without first settling with her. Hilda, alone in her own apartment — it was difficult jjjll I ' to keep Llewellyn Stanhope away from even that door in his pursuit of her signature — considered the vagary life had become for her that was so whimsical, and the mystery of her secret which was so solely hers. Alicia knew, of course ; but that was as if she had written it down on a sheet of perfect notepaper and locked it up in a drawer. Alicia did not speculate about it, and the whole soul of it was tangled now in a speculation. There had been a time filled with the knowledge and the joy of this new depth in her like a buoyant sea, and she had been content to float in it, imagining desirable things. Stanhope's waiting ilijllllj contract made a limit to the time — a limit she brought up against without distress or shock, but with a kind of recognising thrill in contact at last with the necessity for action, decision, a climax of I high heart-beats. She saw with surprise that she had lived with her passion these weeks and months half consciously expecting that a crucial moment would dissolve it, like a person aware that he dreams and will presently awake. She had not faced till now any exigency of her case. But the crucial moment had leapt upon her, pointing out the W '1 iiid I.; I I • THE PATH OF A STAR 215 \v in 1 the like tin tint! she but last of she nths ent ams till cial the subjection of her life, and she, undefended, sought only how to accomplish her bonds. Certainly she saw no solution that did not seem monstrous; yet every pulse in her demanded a solution ; there was no questioning^ the imperious need. She had the fullest, clearest view of the situation, and she looked at it without flinching and without compromise. Above all she had true vision of Stephen Arnold, glorifying nowhere, extenuating nothing. It was almost cruel to be the victim of such circumstance, and be denied the soft uses of illusion ; but if that note of sympathy had been offered to Hilda she would doubtless have retorted that it was precisely because she saw him that she loved him. His figure, in its poverty and austerity, was always with her ; she made with the fabric of her nature a kind of shrine for it, enclosing, encompassing ; and her possession of him, by her knowledge, was deep and warm and protecting. I think the very fulness of it brought her a kind of content with which, but for Llewellyn and his contract, she would have been willing to go on indefinitely. It made him hers in a primary and essential way, beside which any mere acknowledgment or vow seemed chiefly decorative, like the capital of a pillar firmly rooted. There may be an appearance that she took a good deal for granted ; if there is, I fear that in the baldness of this history it has not been evident how much and how variously Arnold depended on her, in how many places her colour and her vitality patched out the monkish garment of his soul. This with her enthusiasm and her cognisance. It may be remembered, too, that there was in the very tenderness of her contemplation of the priest in her path an imperious tinge born of the way men had so invariably fpelted there. Certainly they had been men and not * i'' 1, mi ti i( •:t; ■ -ii ■ ; i'' f I ■.31 .will [ii it ^ mm''' 'M iliili iii mii'% IM 216 THE PATH OF A STAR priests ; but the little flickering doubt that sometimes leaped from this source through the glow of her imagination she quenched very easily with the reflection that such a superficies was after all a sophistry, and that only its rudiments were facts. She proposed, calmly and lovingly, to deal with the facts. She told herself that she would not be greedy about the conditions under which she should prevail ; but her world had always, always shaped itself answering her hand, and if she cast her eyes upon the ground now, and left the future, even to-morrow, undevisaged, it was because she would not find any concessions of her own among its features if she could help it. It was a trick she played upon her ccrtisciousness ; she would not look, but she coul.l see without looking. She saw that which explained itself to be best, fittest, most reasonable ; and thus she sometimes wandered with Arnold anticii)atively, on afternoons when there was no matinee, through the perfumed orange orchards of Los Angeles, on the Pacific slope. She would not search to-morrow ; but she took toward it one of those steps of vague intention, at the end of which we beckon to possibilities. She wrote to Stephen and asked him to come to see her then. She had not spoken to him since the night of the Viceroy's party, when she put her Bohemian head out of the ticca-gharry to wish him good -night, and he walked home alone under the stars, trying to remember a line of Horace, a chaste one, about woman's beauty. She sent the note by post. There was no answer ; but that was as usual ; there never was an answer unless something prevented him ; he always came, and ten minutes before the time. When the time arrived she sat under the blue |j THE PATH OF A STAR 217 took t the rote then. If the head and g to Lbout ■here Biever K;he Htime. ■ blue umbrellas devising what she would say, creating fifty different forms of what he woulil say, while tlie hands slipped round the clock past the moment that should have brought his step to the door. Hilda noted it, and compared her watch. A bowl of roses stood on a little table near a window ; she got up and went to it, bending over and rearranging the flowers. The light fell on her and on the roses ; it was a beautiful attitude, and when at a footfall she looked up expectantly it was more beautiful, l^nt it was only another boarder — a Mr. Gonzalves, with a highly varnished complexion, who took off his hat elaborately as he passed the open door. She became conscious of her use of the roses, and abandoned them. Presently she sat down on a bentwood rocking-chair, and swayed to and fro, aware of an ebbing of confidence. Half an hour later she was still sitting there. Her face had changed, something had faded in it ; her gaze at the floor was profoundly speculative, and when she glanced at the empty door it was with timidity. Arnold had not come and did not come. The evening passed without explanation, and next morning the post brought no letter. It was simplest to suppose that her own had not reached him, and Hilda wrote again. The second letter she sent by hand, with a separate sheet of paper addressed for signature. The messenger brought back the sheet of paper with strange initials, "J. L. for S. A.," and there was no reply. There remained the possibility of absence from Calcutta, of illness. That he should have gone away was most unlikely, that he had fallen ill was only too probable. Hilda looked from her bedroom window across the varying expanse of parapeted flat roofs and mosque bubbles that lay between her and College Street, and curbed the m: ■ I f. 11 > I li I m m il \* ' l?P. Bill' i|;!'i'i'i; 'I 2i8 THE PATH OF A STAR impulse in her feet that would have resulted in the curious spectacle of Llewellyn Stanhope's leading lady callinj^ in person at a monastic gate to express a kind of solicitude against which precisely it was barred. A situation after all could be too pictorial, looked at from the point of view of the Order, a con- sideration which flashed with grateful humour across her anxiety. Alicia would have known ; but both tiie Livingstones had gone for a short sea change to Ceylon, with Duff Lindsay and some touring people from Surrey. They were most anxious, Hilda re- membered, that Arnold should accompany them. Could he in the end have gone? There was, of course, the accredited fount and source of all informa- tion, the Father Superior; but with what propriety could Hilda Howe apply for it! Llewellyn mii^ht write for her ; but it was glaringly impossible that the situation should lay itself so far open to Llewellyn. Looking in vain for resources she came upon an expedient. She found a sheet of cheap notepaper, and made it a little greasy. On it she wrote with red ink, in the cramped hand of the hired scribe of the bazar : — " Sir — Will you please to inform to me if Mr. Arnold has gone mofussil or England as I have some small business with him. Yours obedient servant, — VVuN Sing." "It can't be forgery," she reflected, "since there isn't a Wun Sing," and added an artistic postscript, " Boots and shoes verry much cheap for cash." She made up the envelope to match, and addressed it with consistent illiteracy to the head of the Mission. The son of the Chinese basketmaker, who dwelt almost ne^t door, spoke neither English nor THE PATH OF A STAR 219 Mr. >me lere ■ipt, iShe ;sed the ,'ho nor flindustani, but showed an easy comprehension of her promise of backsheesh when he should return with an answer. She had a joyful anticipation, while she waited, of the terms in which she should tell Arnold how she passed disguised as a Chinese shoe- maker, before the receptive and courteous conscious- ness of his spiritual senior ; of how she penetrated, in the suggestion of a pigtail and an unpaid bill, within the last portals that might be expected to receive her in the form under which, for example, certain black and yellow posters were presenting her to the public at that moment. She saw his scruples go swiftly down before her laughter and the argument of her tender anxiety, which she was quite prepared to learn foolish and unnecessary. There was even an ad- venturous instant in which she leaped at actual personation of the Chinaman, and she looked in rapture at the vivid risk of the thing before she abandoned it as involving too much. She sent no receipt form this time — that was not the practice of the bazar — and when, hours after, her messenger returned with weari- ness and dejection written upon him, in the characters of a perfunctory Chinese smile, she could only gather from his negative head and hands that no answer had been given him, and that her expedient had failed. Hilda stared at her dilemma. Its properties were curiously simple. His world and hers, with the same orbit, had no point of contact. Once swinging round their eastern centre they had come close enough for these two, leaning very far out, to join hands. When they loosed it seemed they lost. The more she gazed at it the more it looked a pre- posterous thing that in a city vibrant with human communication by all the methods which make it easy, it should be possible for one individual thus to ■i' ^ 2 20 THE PATH OF A STAR drop suddenly and completely from the knowledge of another — a mediaeval thing. Their isolation as Europeans of course accounted for it ; there was no medium m the brown population that hummed in the city streets. Hilda could not even bribe a servant without knowing how to speak to him. She ravaged the newspapers ; they never were more bare of reference to consecrated labours. The nearest ap- proach to one was a paragraph chronicling a social evening given by the Wesleyans in Sudder Street, with an exhibition of the cinematograph. In a moment , of defiance and determination she sent a telegram Iff I li: I studiously colourless, " Unable find you wish com- ! il; I municate please inform. A. Cassidy." Arnold had [,i j never ignorea w. 2 name she was born to, in occasional I scrupulous moments he addressed her by it; he . 1 1 would recognise and understand. There was no I I reply. ' I I The enigma pressed upon her days, she lived in the It heaviness of it, waiting. His silence adding itself up, I I brought her a kind of shame for the exertions she had "ill made. She turned with obstinacy from the further schemes her ingenuity presented. Out of the sum of her unsuccessful efforts grew a reproach of Arnold ; every one of them increased it. His behaviour she could forgive, arbitrarily putting against it twenty ex- planations, but not the futility of what she had done. Her resentment of that undermined all the fairness of her logic and even triumphed over the sword of her suspense. She never quite gave up the struggle, but in effect she passed the week that intervened pinioned in her unreason — bands that vanished as she looked at them, only to tie her thrice in another place. Life became a permanent interrogation point. Waiting under it, with a perpetual upward gaze, 4 ": THE PATH OF A STAR 221 ex- lone. Irness Ird of (ened Is she )ther )oint. faze, perhaps she grew a little dizzy. The sun of March had been increasing, and the air of one particular Saturday afternoc)n had begun to melt and glow and hang in the streets with a kind of inertia, like a curtain that had to be parted to be penetrated. Hilda came into the house and faced the stairs with an inclination to leave her body on the ground-floor and mount in spirit only. When she glanced in at the drawing-room door and saw Arnold sitting under the bhie umbrellas, a little paler, a thought more serene than usual, she swept into the room as if a tide carried her, and sank down upon a footstool close to him, as if it had dropped her there. He had risen at her appearance, he was all himself but rather more the priest, his face of greeting had exactly its usual asking intelligence but to her the fact that he was normal was lost in the fact that he was near. He held out his hand but she only sought his face, speechless, hugging her knees. " You are overcome by the sun," he said. " Lie down for a moment," and again he offered her a hand to help her to rise. She shook her head but took his hand, enclosing it in both of hers with a sort of happy deliberation, and drew herself up by it, while her eyes, shining like dark surfaces of some glorious consciousness within, never left his face. So she stood beside him with her head bowed, still dumb. It was her supreme moment ; life never again brought her anything like it. It was not that she confessed .so much as that she asserted, she made a glowing thing plain, cried out to him, still standing silent, the deep-lying meaning of the tangle of their lives. She was shaken by a pure delight, as if she unclosed her hand to show him a strange jewel in her palm, hers and his for the looking. The intensity of her con- sciousness swept round him and enclosed him, she lill:';' !it, 222 THE PATH OF A STAR l.new this profoMndly, and had no thought of the insulation he had in his robe. The instant passed ; he stood unmoved definitely enough, yet some vibration in it reached him, for there was surprise in his involuntary backward step. " You must have thought me curiously rude," he said, as if he felt about for an explanation, " but your letters were only given to me an hour ago. We have all been in retreat, you know." " In retreat\ " Hilda exclaimed. " Ah, yes. How foolish I have been ! In retreat," she repeated softly, flicking a trace of dust from his sleeve. " Of 111' course." " It was held \v St. Paul's College," Stephen went on, " by Father Neede. Shall we sit down ? And of course at such times no communications reach us, no letters or papers." I j " No letters or papers," Plilda said, looking at him softly, as it were, through the film of the words. They sat down, he on the sofa, she on a chair very near it. There was another placed at a more usual distance, but she seemed incapable of taking the step or two toward it, away from him. Stephen gave himself to the grateful sense of her proximity. He had come to sun himself again in the warmth of her fellowship ; he was stirred by her emphasis of their separation and reunion. " And what, please," he asked, "have you been doing? Account to me for the time." " While you have been praying and fasting ? Wondering what you were at, and waiting for you to finish. Waiting," she said, and clasped her knees with her intent look again, swaying a little to and fro in her content, as if that which she waited for had already come, full and very desirable. " Have you been reading ? " .t\ 'S f 11 : ■ jllli THE PATH OF A STAR 223 her the her .nd |ing? ing? |u to Iwith her iady " Oh, I have been reading nothing ! You shall never go into retreat again," she went on, with a sudden change of expression. " It is well enough for you, but I am not good at fasting. And I have an indulgence," she added, unaware of her soft, bright audacity, " that will cover both our cases." His face uttered aloud his reflection that she was extravagant. That it was a pity, but that what was not due to her profession might be ascribed to the simple, clear impulse of her temperament— that temperament which he had found to be a well of rare sincerity. " I am not to go any more into retreat?" he said, in grave interrogation ; but the hint of rebuke in his voice was not in his heart, and she knew it. " No ! " she cried. " You shall not be hidden away like that. You shall not go alive into the tomb and leave me at the door. Because I cannot bear it." She leaned toward him, and her hand fell lightly on his knee. It was a claiming touch, and there was something in the unfolded sweetness of her face that was not ambiguous. Arnold received the intelligence. It came in a vague grey monitory form, a cloud, a portent, a chill menace ; but it came, and he paled under it. He seemed to lean upon his hands, pressed one on each side of him to the seat of the sofa for support, and he looked in fixed silence at hers upon his knee. His face seemed to wither, new lines came upon it as the impression grew in him ; and the glamour faded out of hers as she was sharply reminded, looking at him, that he had not traversed the waste with her, that she had kept her \ igils alone. Yet it was all" said and done, and there was no repentance in her. She only gathered herself together, and fell back, as it were, upon her magnifi- m ill n 224 THE PATH OF A STAR cent position. As she drew her hand away, he dropped his face into the cover of his own, leaning his elbow on his knee, and there was a pulsing silence. The instant prolonged itself " Are you praying ? " Hilda asked, with much gentle- ness, almost a childlike note ; and he shook his head. There was another instant's pause, and she spoke again. " Are you so grieved, then," she said, " that this has come upon us? " Again he held his eyes away from her, clasping his hands, and looking at the thing nearest to him, while at last blood from the heart of the natural man in him came up and stained his face, his forehead under the thin ruffling of colourless hair, his neck above the white band that was his badge of difference from other men. " I — fear — I hardly understand," he said. The words fell cramped and singly, and his lip twitched. "It — it is impossible to think " He looked as if he dared not lift his head. One would not say that Hilda hesitated, for there was no failing in the wings of her high confidence, but she looked at him in a brave silence. Her glance had tender investigation in it ; she stood on the brink of her words just long enough to ask whether they would hurt him. Seeing that they would, she never- theless plunged, but with infinite compassion and consideration. She spoke like an agent of Fate, conscious and grieved. " / understand," she said simply. " Sometimes, you know, we are quicker. And you in your cell, how should you find out? That is why I must tell you, because, though I am a woman, you area priest. Partly for that reason I may speak, partly because I love you, Stephen Arnold, better and more ardently THE PATH OF A STAR 22:; ere CO, ce nk cy er- ncl te, [es, [.11, leil ;st. I tly than you can ever love me, or anybody, I think, except i)crhapsyour God. And I am tired of ke(:j)in<^^ silence." She was so direct, so unimpassioned, that half his distress turned to astonishment, and he faced her as if a calm and reasoned hand had been laid upon the confusion in him. Meeting his gaze, she unbarred a floodgate of happy tenderness in her eyes. "Love!" he gasped in it, "I have nothing to do with that." " Oh," she said, " you have everything to do with it." Something thrilled him without asking his permis- sion, assuring him that he was a man — until then :; placid theory with an unconscious basis. It was therefore a blow to his saintship, or it would have been, but he warded it off, flushed and trembling. It was as if he had been ambuscaded. He had to hold himself from the ignominy of flight ; he rose to cut his way out, making an effort to strike with precision. "Some perversity has seized you," he said. The muscles about his mouth quivered, giving him a curious aspect. " You mean nothing of what }ou say." *' Do you believe that?" " I — I cannot think anything else. It is the only way I can — I can — make excuse." " Ah, don't excuse me ! " she murmured, with an astonishing little gay petulance. "You cannot have thought " in spite of himself he made a step towards the door. " Oh, I did think — I do think. And you must not go." She too stood up, and stayed him. " Let us ai least see clearly." There was a persuading note in her voice, one would have thought that she was deal- 15 ns 226 THE PATH OF A STAR ing with a patient or a child. " Tell me," she clasped her hands behind her back and looked at him in marvellous simple candour, " do I really announce this to you ? Was there not in yourself anywhere — deep down — any knowledge of it ? " " I did not guess — I did not dream 1 " " And — now ? " she asked. A heavenly current drifted from her, the words rose and fell on it with the most dazing suggestion in their soft hesitancy. It must have been by an instinct jij;, of her art that her hand went up to the cross on Arnold's breast and closed over it, so that he should see only her. The familiar vision of her stood close, looking things intolerably new and different. Again fil came out of it that sudden liberty, that unpremedi- 11 tated rush and shock in him. He paled with in- dignation, with the startled resentment of a woman wooed and hostile. His face at last expressed some- thing definite, it was anger ; he stepped back and caught at his hat. " I am sorry," he said, " I am sorry. , I thought you infinitely above and beyond all that." Hilda smiled and turned away. If he chose it was his opportunity to go, but he stood regarding her, twirling his hat. She sat down, clasping her knees, and looked at the floor. There was a square of sunlight on the carpet, and motes were rising in it. " Ah well, so did I," she said meditatively, without raismg he*- eyes. Then she leaned back in the chair and looked at him, in her level simple way. " It was a foolish theory," she said, " and — now — I can't understand it at all. I am amazed to find that it even holds good with you." It was so much in the tone of their usual dis- cussions that Arnold was conscious of a lively relief. The instinct of flight died down in him ; he looked at her with something like inquiry. THE PATH OF A STAR 227 [out lair I— I Ihat lis- lief. at " It will always be to me curious," she went on, " that you could have thought your part in me so limited, so poor. That is enough to say. I find it hard to understand, anybody would, that you could take so much good from me and not — so much more." She opened her lips again, but kept back the words. " Yes," she added, " that is enough to say." But for the colourless face and the tenseness about her lips it might have been thought that she definitely abandoned what she had learned she could not have. There was a note of acquiescence and regret in her voice, of calm reason above all ; and this sense reached him, induced him to listen, as he generally listened, for anything she might find that would explain the situation. His fingers went from habit, as a man might play with his watch chain, to the symbol of his faith ; her eyes followed them, and rested mutely on the cross. There was a profundity of feeling in them, wistful, acknowledging, deeply speculative. " You could not forget that ? " she said, and shook her head as if she answered herself I le looked into her upturned face and saw that her eyes were swimmmg. " Never ! " he said, " Never ! " but he walked to the nearest chair and sat down. He seemed suddenly endowed with the courage to face this problem, and his head, as it rose in the twilight against the window, was grave and calm. Without a word a great tenderness of understanding filled the space between them ; an interpreting compassion went to and fro, Suddenly a new light dawned in Hilda's e\cs, she leaned forward and met his in an absorption which caught them out of themselves into some space where souls wander, and perhaps embrace. It was a frail adventure upon a gaze, but it carried them infinitely far. The moment died away, neither of them could 228 THE PATH OF A STAR s I ii have measured it, and when it had finally ebbed — they were conscious of every subsiding throb — the silence remained, like a margin for the beauty of it. They sat immovable, while the light faded. After a time the woman spoke. " Once before," she began, but he put up his hand, and she stopped. Then as if she would no longer be restrained. " That is all I want," she whispered. " That is enough." For a time they said very little, looking back upon their divine moment ; the shadows gathered in the corners of the room and made quiet conversation which was almost audible in the pauses. Then Hilda began to speak, steadily, calmly. You, too, would have forgotten her folly in what she found to say, as Arnold did ; you too would have drawn faith and courage from her face. One would not be irreverent, but if this woman were convicted of the unforgiveable sin, she could explain it, and obtain justification rather than pardon. Her horizon had narrowed, she sought now only that it should enfold them both. She begged that he would wipe out her insanity, that he would not send her away. He listened and melted to conviction. " Then I may stay ? " she said at the end. " I am satisfied — if a way can be found." " I will find a way," she replied. After which he went back through the city streets to his disciples in new humility and profounder joy, knowing that virtue had gone out of him. She in her room where she lodged also considered the miracle, twice wonderful in that it asked no faith of her. CHAPTER XXI |joy» le in the Lith IT is difficult to be precise about such a thing, but I should think that Hilda gave herself to the marvellous aspect of what had come and gone between them, for several hours after Arnold left her. It was not for some time, at all events, that she arrived at the consideration — the process was naturally downward — that the s(n>l of the marvel lay in the exact moment of its happening. Nothing could have been more heaven-sent than her precious perception, exactly then, that before the shining gift of Arnold's spiritual sympathy, all her desire for a lesser thing from him must creep away abashed for ever. Even when the lesser thing, by infinitely gradual expansion, again became the greater, it remained permanently leavened and lifted in her by the strange and lovely incident that had taken for the moment such com- mand of her and of him. She would not question it or reason about it, perhaps with an instinct to avert its destruction ; she simply drew it deeply into her content. Only its sweet deception did not stay with her, and she let that go with open hands. She wanted, more than ever, the whole of Stephen Arnold, all that was so openly the Mission's and all that was so evidently God's. It will be seen that she felt in no way compelled to advise him of this her back- sliding. I doubt whether such a perversion of her magnificent course of action ever occurred to her. '22a 2110 THE PATH OF A STAR !i I 1. -'•; fe 1l. It was mac^nificcnt, for it entailed a high disregarding stroke; it implied a sublime confidence of what the end would be, a capacity to wait and endure. She smiled buoyantly, in the intervals of arranging it, at the idea that Stephen Arnold stood beyond her ultimate possession. There were difficulties, but the moment was favourable to her, more favourable than it would have been the year before, or any year but this. Before ten days had passed she was able to write to Arnold describing her plan, and she was put to it to keep the glow of success out of her letter. She kept it out, that, and everything but a calm and humble statement — any Clarke Brother might have dictated it — of what she proposed to do. Perhaps the inten- tion was less obvious than the desire that he should approve it. The messenger waited long by the entrance t j the Mission House for an answer, exchanging, sitting on his feet, the profane talk of the bazar with the gate- keeper of the Christians. Stephen was in chapel. There was no service ; he had half an hour to rest in and he rested there. He was speculating, in the grateful dimness, about the dogma — he had never quite accepted it, though Colquhoun had — of the intercessory power of the souls of saints. A converted Brahmin, an old man, had died the day before. Arnold luxuriated in the humility of thinking that he would be glad of any good word dear old Nourendra Lai could say for him. The chapel was deliciously refined. The scent of fresh cut flowers floated upon the continual presence of the incense ; a lily outlined its head against the tall carved altar- piece the Brothers had brought from Damascus. The seven brass lamps that hung from the rafters above the altar rails were also Damascene, carved THE PATH OF A STAR 231 the f on gate- apel. rest in the Inever If the ertcd fore, that old il was iwers nse ; laltar- .scus. iters .rved and pierced so that the h'^ht in them was a still thing like a prayer ; and the place breathed vague meanings which did not ask understanding. It was a refuge from the riot antl squalor of the whitewashed streets with a double value and a treble charm — I. U.S. among plaster gods, a sanctuary in the bazar. Stephen sat in it motionless, with his lean limbs crossed in front of him, until the half-hour was up ; then he bent his knee before the altar and went out to meet a servant at the door with Hilda's letter. The chapel opened upon an upper verandah, he crossed it to get a better light and stood to read with his back half turned upon the comers and goers. it was her first communication since they parted, and in spite of its colourlessness it seemed to lay strong eager hands upon him, turning his shoulder that way, upon the world, bending his head over the page. He had not dwelt much upon their strange experience, in the days that followed. It had retreated, for him, behind the veil of tender mystery with which he shrouded, even from his own eyes, the things that lay between his soul and Goi). The space from that day to this had been more than usually full of ministry ; its pure uses had fallen like snow, blotting and deadening the sudden wonder that blossomed then. Latterly he had hardly thought of it. So far was he removed, so deeply drawn again within his familiar activities, that he regarded Hilda's letter for an instant with a lip of censure, as if, for some reason, it should not have been admitted. It was, in a manner, her physical presence, the words expanded into her, through it she walked back into his life, with an interrogation. Standing there by the pillar he became gradually aware of the weight of the interrogation. I 1 I ) 232 THE PATH OF A STAR A passing Brother cast at him the sweet smile of the cloister. Arnold stopped him and transferred an immediate duty, which the other accepted with a slightly exaggerated happiness. They might have been girls together, with their apologies and protesta- tions. The other Brother went on in a little glow of pleasure, Arnold turned back into the chapel, carry- ing, it seemed to him, a woman's life in his hand. He took his seat and folded his arms almost eagerly ; there was a light of concentration in his eye and a line of compression about his lips which had not marked his meditation upon Nourendra Lai. The vigour in his face suggested that he found a kind of athletic luxury in what he had to think about. Ikother Colquhoun, with his flat hat clasped before his breast, passed down the aisle. Stephen looked up with a trace of impatience. Presently he rose hurriedly as if he remembered something, and went and knelt before one of several paintings that hung u[)on the chapel walls. They were old copies of great works, discoloured and damaged. They had sailed round the Cape to India when the century was young, and a lady friend of the Mission had bought them at the sale of the effects of a ruined Begum. A*'nold was one of those who could separate them from their incongruous history and consecrate them over again. He often found them helpful when he sought to lift his spirit, and in any special matter a special comfort. He bent for ten minutes before a Crucifixion, and then hastened back to his place. Only one reflection corrected the vigorous satisfaction with which he thought out Hilda's proposition. That disturbed him in the middle of it, and took the somewhat irrelevant form of a speculation as to whether the events of their last meeting should have had any place in his Thursday confession. He was THE PATH OF A STAR 233 lOSt his hich Lai. id a DOUt. -fore oked rose went [hung s of had was ught gum. hem hem n he ter a re a lace, iction iThat the s to have was able to find almost at once a conscientious negative for it, and it did not recur again. He got up reluctantly when the Mission bell sounded, and indeed he had come to the end of a very absorbing interest. His decision was final against Hilda's scheme. His worn experience cried out at the sacrifice in it without the illumination — wiiich it would certainly lack- — of religious faith. She confessed to the lack, and that was all she had to say about her motive, which, of course, placed him at an immense disadvantage in considering it. But the question then descended to another plane, became merely a doubt as to the most useful employ- ment of energy, and that doubt nobody could entertain long, nobody of reasonable breadth of view, who had ever seen her expressing the ideals of the stage. Arnold did his best to ward off all consideration which he could suspect of a personal origin, but his inveterate self-sacrifice slipped in and counted, naturally enough, under another guise, against her staying. He went to his room and wrote to Hilda at once, the kindest, simplest of letters, but conveying a defin- itely negative note. He would have been perhaps more guarded, but it was so plainly his last word to her ; Llewellyn Stanhope was proclaiming the departure of his people in ten days' time upon every blank wall. So he gave himself a little latitude, he let in an undercurrent of gentle reminiscence, of serious assurance as to the difference she had made. And when he had finally bade her begone to the light and fulness of her own life, and fastened up his letter, he deliberately lifted it to his lips and placed a trembling, awkward kiss upon it, like the kiss of an old man, perfunctory yet bearing a tender intention. 234 THE PATH OF A STAR The Livingstones and Duff Lindsay had come back, the people from Surrey having been sped upon their way to the Far East. Stephen remembered with more than his usual relish an engagement to dine that evening in Middleton Street. He involun- tarily glanced at his watch. It was half-past one. The afternoon looked arid, stretching between. Con- sulting his tablets he found that he had nothing that was really of any consequence to do. There were items, but they were unimportant, transferable. He had dismissed Hilda Howe, but a glow from the world she helped to illumine showed seductively at the end of his day. He made an errand involving a long walk, and came back at an hour which left nothing but evensong between him and eight o'clock. He was suddenly aware as he talked to her later, of a keener edge to his appreciation of the charm of Alicia Livingstone. Her voyage, he assured her, had done her all the good in the world. Her delicate bloom had certainly been enhanced by it, and the graceful spring of her neck and her waist seemed to have its counterpart in a freshened poise of the agreeable things she found to say. It was delightful the way she declared herself quite a different being, and the pleasure with which she moved, dragging fascinating skirts behind her, about the room. She made more of an impression upon him on the aesthetic side than she had ever done before ; she seemed more highly vitalised, her fineness had greater relief, and her charm more freedom. Lindsay was there, and Arnold glanced from one to the other of them, first with a start the:i with a smile, at the recollection of Hilda's conception of their relations. If this were a type and instance of hopeless love he had certainly misread all the songs and saying-. He kept tlvj idea in his mind and went on regarding her in the THE PATH OF A STAR 235 / at ang left ock. iter, m of her, icate the mcd the tful ing, She etic med Uef, ere, em, tion .vere liinly the the h'ght of it with a pondering smile, turning it over and finding a lively pleasure in his curious acumen in such an unwonted direction. It was a very flower of emotional naivett^^ though a moment later he cast it from him as a weed, grown in idleness ; and indeed it might have abashed him to say what concern it had in the mind of the Order of St. Barnabas. It was gratifying, nevertheless, to have his observation confirmed by the way in which Alicia leaned across him toward Lindsay with occasional references to Laura Filbert, apparently full of light-heartedness, references which Duff received in the square- shouldered matter-of-course fashion of his country- men approaching their nuptials in any quarter of the globe. It was gratifying, and yet it enhanced in Stephen this evening the indrawing of his under- lip, a plaintive twist of expression which spoke upon the faces of quite half the Order, of patience under privation. The atmosphere was one of congratulation, the week's Gazette had transformed Surgeon - Major Livingstone into Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel. The officer thus promoted, in a particularly lustrous shirt bosom, made a serious social effort to correspond, and succeeded in producing more than one story of the Principal Medical Officer with her Majesty's forces in India, which none of them had heard before. They were all delighted at Herbert's step, he was just the kind of person to get a step, and to get it rather early ; a sense of the propriety of it mingled with the general gratification. There was a feeling of ease among them, too, of the indefeasibly won, which the event is apt to bring even when the surgeon - lieutenant - colonelcy is most strikingly deserved. With no strain imaginable one could see the relaxation. 236 THE PATH OF A STAR f;3 "We can't do much in celebration," Lindsay vvr.s saying, "but I've got a box at tlie theatre, if you'll come. Our people had some pomfret and oysters over on ice from Bombay this morning, and I've sent my share to Bonsard to see what he can do with it for supper. Jack Cummins and Lady Dolly are coming. By the way, wl^at do you think the totalizator paid Lady Dolly on Saturday — six thousand ! " "Rippin'," Herbert agreed. "We'll all come— at least — I don't know. What do you say, Arnold? " "Of course Stephen will come," Alicia urged. "Why not?" It was putting him and his gi)wn at once beyond the operation of vulgar prejudice, intimating that they quite knew him for what he was. "What's the piece?" Herbert inquired. " Oh, the piece isn't up to much, I'm afraid, only that Hilda Howe is worth seeing in almost any- thing." "Thanks," Stephen put in, "but I think, thanks very much, I would rather not." " I remember," Alicia said, "you were with us the night she played in The Offence of Galilee. I don't wonder that you do not wish to disturb that impression." Stephen fixed his eyes upon a small pyramid of crystallised cherries immediately in front of him, and appeared to consider, austerely, what form his reply should take. There was an instant's perceptible pause, and then he merely bowed toward Alicia as if vaguely to acknowledge the kindness of her re- collection. " I think," he said again, " that I will not accompany you to-night, if you will be good enough to excuse me." " You must excuse us both," Alicia said definitely, THE PATH OF A STAR 237 IS the I that td of and reply )tible ia as ir re- ll not )ugh itely, " I should much rather stay at home and talk to Stephen." At this they all cried out, but Miss Livingstone would not change her mind. " I haven't seen him for three weeks," she said, with gentle effronter)-, making nothing of his presence, '* and he's much more improving than either of you. I also shall choose the better part." " How you can call it that, with Hilda in the balance " Duff protested. ** But then you've invited Lady Dolly. After winning six thousand there will be no holding Lady Dolly. She'll be capable of cat-calls ! How I should love," Alicia went on, "to have HiliJa meet her. She would be a mine to Hilda." " For pity's sake," cried her brother, " stop asking Hilda and people who are a mine to Hilda! It's too perceptible, the way she digs in them." " You dear old thing, you're quite clever to-night ! What difference does it make? They never know — they never dream ! I wish I could dig." Alicia locked pensively at the olive between her finger and thumb. "Thank Heaven you can't," Duff said warmly. It was a little odd, the personal note. Alicia's eyes remained upon the olive. " It's all she lives for." " Well," Duff declared, " I can imagine higher ends." "You're not abusing Hilda!" Alicia said, address- ing the olive. " Not at all. Only vindicating you." It did single them out, this fencing. Herbert and Arnold sat as spectators, pushed, in a manner, aside. " I suppose she will be off soon," Livingstone said. I I i'l 'i| ;,.!! 1. ■■'. i 238 THE PATH OF A STAR " Oh, dreadfully soon. On the fifteenth. I had a note from her to-day." "Did she say she was going?" Stephen asked quickly. " She mentioned the Company — she is the Com- pany surely." " Oh, undoubtedly. May I — might I ask for a little more soda-water, Alicia?" He made the request so formally that she glanced at him with surprise. " Please do — but isn't it very odious, by itself, that way? I suppose we shouldn't leave out Hamilton Bradley — he certainly counts." " For how much ? " inquired her brother. " He's going to pieces." " Hilda can pull him together again," Lindsay said incautiously. " Has she an influence for good — over him ? " Stephen inquired, and cleared his throat. He caught a glance exchanged, and frowned. " Oh yes," Duff said, " I fancy it is for good. For good, certainly. The odd part of it is that he began by having an influence over her which she declares improved her acting. So that was for good, too, as it turned out. I think she makes too much of him. To my mind he speaks like a bit of consecrated stage tradition and looks like a bit of consecrated stage furniture — he, and his thin nose, and his thin lips, and his thin eyebrows. Personally, I'm sick of his eyebrov/s." " They'll end by marrying," said Surgeon-Lieut.- Colonel Livingstone. " Herbert ! How little you know her ! " " It's possible enough," Duff said, " especially if she finds him in any way necessary to her produc- tion of herself. Hilda has knocked about too much THE PATH OF A STAR 239 ly if Iduc- luch to have many illusions. One is pretty sure she would place that first." " You are saying a thing which is monstrous ! " cried Alicia. Unperturbed, her brother supported his conviction. *' She'll have to marry him to get rid of him," he said. " Fancy the opportunities of worrying her the brute will have in those endless ocean voyages ! " "Oh, if you think Hilda could be zvonied into anything ! " Miss Livingstone exclaimed derisively. " If the man v-^re irritating, do you suppose she wouldn't arrange —wouldn't find means? " " She would have him put in irons, no doubt," Herbert retorted, "or locked up with the other sad dogs, in charge of the ship's butcher." The three laughed immoderately, and Stephen, looking up, came in at the end with a smile. Alicia pronounced her brother too absurd, and unfitted by nature to know anything about creatures like Hilda Howe. " A mere man to begin with," she said. " Vou haven't the ghost of a temperament, Herbert ; you know you haven't." " He got's a lovely bedside manner," Lindsay remarked, " and that's the next thing to it." " Rubbish ! I don't want to hurry you," Alicia glanced at the watch on her wrist, " but unless you and Herbert want to miss half the first act you had better be off. Stephen and I will have our coffee comfortably in the drawing - room and find what excuses we can for you." But Stephen put out his hand with a movement of slightly rigid deprecation. " If it is not too vacillating of me," he said, " and I may be forgiven, I think I w ill change my mind, and go. I have no business to break up your party, and besides, I shall probably not have another no THE PATH OF A STAR opportunity— I should rather like to go. To the theatre, of course, that is. Not to Bonsard's, thanks very much." " Oh, do come on to Bonsard's," Lindsay said, and Alicia protested that he would miss the best of Lady Dolly, but Stephen was firm. Bonsard's was beyond the limit of his indulgence. '■I the nks ind ady ond CHAPTER XXII ONLY the Sphinx confronted them after all when tiiey arrived at the theatre, the Sphinx luul Lady Dolly. The older feminine presentment sent her iDelittling gaze over their heads and beyond them from the curtain ; Lady Dolly turned a modish head to greet them from the front of the box. Lady Dolly raised her eyes but not her elbows, which were assist- ing her a good deal with the house in exploring and being explored, enabling Colonel John Cummins, who sat by her side, to observe how very perfect and adorable the cut of her bodice was. Since Colonel Cummins was accustomed to say in moments when his humour escaped his discretion, things highly appreciative of bodices, the rS/e of Lady Dolly's elbows could hardly be dismissed as unimportant. Moreover, the husband attached to the elbows belonged to the Department of which Colonel John was the head, so that they rested, one may say, upon a very special plane. Alicia disturbed it with the necessity of taking Colonel Cummins! place, which Lady Dolly accepted with admirable spirit, assuring the usurper, with the most engaging candour, that she simply ought never to be seen without turquoises. " Believe it or not as you like, but I love you better every time I see jou in that necklace." Lady Dolly clasped her hands, with her fan in them, in the abandonment of her i6 I 242 THE PATH OF A STAR ' II l!| . 'I i affection, and "love you better" floated back and dispersed itself among the men. Alicia smiled the necessary acknowledgment. All the women she knew made compliments to her; it was a kind of cult among them. The men had sometimes an air of envying their freedom of tongue. " Don't say that," she returned lightly, "or Herbert will never give me any diamonds." She too looked her approval of Lady Dolly's bodice, but said nothing. It was doubtless precisely because she disdained certain forms of feminine barter that she got so much for nothing. " And where," demanded Lady Dolly, in an electric whisper, " did you find that dear sweet little priest ? Do introduce him to me — at least by and by, when I've thought of something to say. Let mc see, wasn't it Good Friday last week ? I'll ask him if he had hot-cross buns — or do people eat those on Boxing Day? Pancakes come in somewhere, if one could only be sure ! " Stephen clung persistently to the back of the box. His senses were filled for the moment by its other occupants, the men in the fresh correctness of their evening dress, whose least gesture seemed to spring from an indefinite fulness of life, the two women in front, a kind of lustrous tableau of what it was possible to choose and to enjoy. They were grouped and shut off in a high light which seemed to proceed partly from the usual sources and partly from their own personalities ; he saw them in a way which underlined their significance at every point. It seemed to Stephen that in a manner he profaned this temple of what he held to be poorest and cheapest in life, a paradox of which he was but dimly aware in his dejection. A sharp impression of his physical inferiority to. the other men assailed him ; his THE PATH OF A STAR 243 so was iped :ecd :heir Ihicli It Liicd [pest 'are bical his appreciation of their muscular shoulders had a rasp in it. Tor once the poverty of spirit to which he held failed to offer him a refuge, his eye wandered restlessly as if attempting futile reconciliations, and the thing most present with him was the worn-all-day feeling about the neck of his cassock. He fixed his attention presently in a climax of passive discomfort on the curtain, where unconsciously, his gaze crept with a subtle interrogation in it to the wide eyeballs of the Sphinx. The stalls gradually filled, although it was a second production, in the middle of the week, and although the gallery and the rupee seats under it were nearly empty. The piece accounted for both. When Duff Lindsay said at dinner that it wasn't " up to much," he spoke, I fancy, from the nearest point of view he could take to that of the Order of St. Barnabas. As a matter of fact. The Victim of Virtue was up to a very great deal, but its points were so delicate that one must have been educated rather broadly to grasp them, which is again perhaps a foolish contrariety of terms. At all events they carried no appeal to the theatre-goers from the sailing ships in the river or the regiments in the fort, who turned as one man that night to Jimmy Finnigan. Stephen was aware, in the abstract, of what he might expect. He savoured the enterprises of the London theatres weekly in the Saturday Revieiv ; he had cast a remotely ob.serving eye upon the pro- ductions of this particular playwright through that medium for a long time. They formed a manifesta- tion of the outer world fit enough to draw a glance of speculation from the inner; their author was an acrobat of ideas. Doubtless we are all clowns in the eyes of the angels, yet we have the habit of supposing that they sometimes look down upon us. It was i rli •f I. I J' 244 THE PATH OF A STAR thus, if the parallel is not ex'i{:jiTcratcd, that Arnold rej^arded the author of 77u' Victim of Virtue. His attitude was quite taken before the orchestra ceased playing ; it was made of negation rather than criticism, on the basis that he had no concern with, and no knowledge of, such things. Deliberately he gave his mind a surface which should sb.ed promiscuous invitation, and folded his lips as it were, i)gainst the rising of the curtain. He thought of Hilda separ- ately, and he 1 )oked for her upon the boards with the simplicity of a desire to see the woman he knew. When finally he did see her she made before him a picture that was to remain with him always as his last impression of an art from which in all its mani- festations on that night he defmitcly turned. From the aigrette in her hair to the paste buckle on her shoe she was inondaine. Her dress, of some in- definite, slight white material, clasped at the waist with a belt that gave the beam of turquoises and the gleam of silver, ministered as much to the capricious ideal of the moment as to the lines and curves of the person it adorned. The set was the inevitable modern drawing-room, and she sat well out on a sofa, with her hands, in long black gloves, resting stiffly, palm downward on each side of her. It was as if she pushed her body forward in an impulse to rise, her rigid arms thrust her siioulders up a little and accentuated the swell of her bosom. It was a vivid, a staccato attitude ; it expressed a tempera- ment, a character, fifty other things ; but especially it epitomised the restraints and the licenses of a world of drawing-rooms. In that first brief mute instant of disclosure she was all that she presently, by voice and movement, proclaimed herself to be — so dazzling and complete that Stephen literally blinked at the revelation. He made an effort, for a moment i» THE PATH OF A STAR 245 of L\)le was to little s a lera- lally .f a ute itly, SO Iked lent or two, to pursue and detect the woman who had hecn his friend ; then the purpose of his coming f^rathially faded from his mind, and he stood wilh folded arms and absorbed eyes watchinj^ tlie other, tile Mrs. Halliday, on the sofa, settinj^ about the fulfilment of a purple destiny. The play j)roceeded and Stephen did not move — did not wince. When Mrs. Halliday, whose mate was exactin;.,'^, exclaimed, "The <;reatest apostle of e.Npediency was St. Paul. He preached ' wives love )'our husbands,' " he even permitted himself the ^host of a smile. At one point he wished himself familiar with the plot ; it was when Hamilton Bradley came jauntily on as Lord InL,dcton, assuring; Mrs. Halliday that immorality was really only short- sightedness. Lady Doll)- in front, repeated Lord In^leton's phrase wilh inj^cnuous wonder. ** I know it's clever," she in-istcd, "but what does it mean? Now that other thins4 — what was it? — 'Subtract vice, aiul virtue is what is left' — that's an ea.sy one. Write it down on your cuff for me, will you, Colonel Cummins? I shall be .so sick if I forget it." Stephen was perhaps the only person in the box quite oblivious of Lady Uolly. He looked steadily over her animated shoulders at the play, wholly involved in an effort to keep its current and direction through the floating debris of constrained sayings with which it was encumbered ; to know in advance whither it was carrying its Mrs. Halliday, and how far Lord Ingleton would accompany. When Lord Ingleton paused as it were to beg four people to "have noticing to do with sentiment — it so often lea's to conviction," and the house murmured its amusement, Arnold shifted his shoulders impatiently. " How inconsistent," Lord Ingleton reproached Mrs. Halliday a moment later, "to wear gloves on your 246 THE PATH OF A STAR It li I? 'Hi.' hands and let your thoughts go candid." Arnold turned to Duff. "There's no excuse for that," he said, but Lindsay was hanging upon Hilda's rejoinder and did not hear him. At the end of the first act, where, after introducing Mrs. Halliday to her husband's divorced first wife, Lord Ingleton is left rubbing his hands with gratifi- cation at having made two such clever women " aware of each other," Stephen found himself absolutely unwilling to discuss the piece with the rest of the party. As he left the box to walk up and down the corridor outside where it was cooler, he heard the voice of Colonel Cummins lifted in further quotation, "*To be good a»(/ charming — what a sinful super- fluity ! * I'm sure nobody ever called you superfluous. Lady Dolly," and was vividly aware of the advis- ability of taking himself and his Order out of the theatre. He had not been gratified, or even from any point appealed to. Hilda's production of Mrs. Halliday was so perfect that it failed absolutely to touch him, almost to interest him. He had no means of measuring or of valuing that kind of woman, the restless brilliant type that lives upon its emotions and tilts at the problems of its sex with a curious comfort in the joust. He was too far from the circle of her modern influence to consider her with anything but impatience if he had met her original person, and her reflection, her reproduction seemed to him frivolous and meaningless. If he went then, how- ever, he would go as he came, in so far as the play was concerned ; the first act, relying altogether upon the jugglery of its dialogue, gave no clue to anything. He owed it to Hilda after all to see the piece out. It was only fair to give her a chance to make the best of it. He decided that it was worth a personal sacrifice to give it her, and went back. - ■ THE PATH OF A STAR 247 He was sufficiently indignant with the leading idea of the play, and sudTiciently absorbed in its progress, at the end of the second act, to permit Lady Dolly to capture him before it occurred to him that he had the use of his legs. Her enthusiasm was so great that it reduced him to something like equivocation. She wanted to know if anything could be more splendid than Mr. Bradley as Lord Ingleton; she confided to Stephen that that was what she called real wickedness, the kind that did the most harm, and invited him by inference, to a liberal judgment of stupid sinners. He sat emitting short unsmiling sentences with eyes nervously fugitive from Lady Dolly's too proximate opulence until the third act began. Then he gave place with embarrassed alacrity to Colonel Cummins, and folded his arms again at the back of the box. Before it was finished he had the gratification of recognising at least one Hilda that he knew. The newspapers found in her interpretation the develop- ment of a soul, and one remembered, reading them, that a clky is a valuable thing in a hurry. A phrase which spoke of a soul bruised out of life and rushing to annihilation would have been more precise. The demand upon her increased steadily as the act went on, and as she met it there slipped into her acting some of her own potentialities of motive and of passion. She offered to the shaping circumstance rich material and abundant plasticity, and when the persecution of her destiny required her to throw herself irretrievably away she did it with a splendid appreciation of large and definite movement that was essentially of herself. The moment of it had a bold gruesomeness that caught the breath — a disinterment on the stage in search of letters that would prove the charge against 248 THE PATH OF A STAR 11 i !Vi' the second year of Mrs. IlalTiday's married life, her letters buried with the poet. It was an advanta^^c which only the husband of Mrs. Ilalhday would have claimed to brin^ so helpless a respondent before ev<*n the informal court at the graveyard ; but it ^ave Hilda a magnificent opportunity of wild, mad apostrophe to the skull, holding it tenderly with both hands, while Lord Ingleton smiled appreciatively in advance of the practical benevolence which was to sustain the lady through the divorce court, and in the final scene offer to her and to the prejudices of the British public the respectability of his name. It was over with a rush at the end, leaving the audience uncertain whether after all enough attention had been paid to that tradition of the footlights which insists on so nice a sense of opj^robrium and compensation, but convinced (jf its desire to applaud. Duff Lindsay turned \s the wave of clapping spent itself, to say to Stephen that he had never respected Hamilton Bradley's acting so much. He said it to Herbert Livingstone instead; the priest had dis- appeared. The outgoers looked at Arnold curiously as he made his way among them in a direction which was not that of the exit. II<: went with hurried purpose in the face of them all toward the region, badly lighted and imperfectly closed, which led to the rear of the stage. He opened ' 'jors into dark closets, and one which g.ive upon the road, retraced his unfamiliar steps and asked a question, to which — it was so unusual from one in his habit — he received a hesitating but correct reply. A moment later he passed Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope, who stood in his path with a hostile stare, and got out of it with a defere.itial bow, and knocked at a door upon which was pasted the name, in large red letters cut from a cts, his -it l1 a he his 1 a lich a t IIK KXOCKKIi Al A ImmiI! ri'uN WHlv H WAS l'OHn:i) TIIK NAMK IN LAlIiil. I.KITKUS. « H # 1 1 m I Tlin PATH OF A STAR 249 poster, of Miss Hilda ITowe. It was a little ajar, so he entered, when she cried " Come in ! " with tlie less hesitation. Hilda sat on the single chair the place contained, in the dress and make-up of the last scene. A servant, who looked up incuriously, was unlacing her shoes. Various garments hung about on nails driven into the unpainted walls, others overflowed from a packing-box in one corner. A common teak- wood dressing-table held make-up saucers and powder-puffs and some remnants of cold fowl which had not been j)artaken of, apparently, with the assistance of a knife and fork. A candle stood in an empty soda-water bottle on each side of the looking- glass, and there was no other light. On the floor a pair of stays, old and soiled, sprawled with unconcern. The place looked sordid and miserable, and Hilda sitting in the middle of it, still in the yellow wig and painted face of Mrs. Halliday, all wrong at that range, gave it a note of false artifice, violent and grievous. Stephen stood in the doorway grasping the handle, saving nothing, and an instant passed before she knew with certainty, in the wretched light, that it was he. Then she sprang up and made a step toward him as if toward victory and reward, but checked herself in time. "Is it [)Ossible!" she exclaimed. " I did not know you were in the theatre." " Yes," he said, with moderation, " I have seen this — this damnable play." "Damnable? Oh! " "It has caused me," he went on, "to regret the substance of my letter this morning. I failed to realise that this was the kind of work you devote your life to. I now see that you could not escape its malign influence — that nowoniiii could. I now think that the alternative that has bee n revealed to you, of I 111 250 THE PATH OF A STAR remaining in Calcutta, is a chance of escape offered you by God Himself. Take it. I withdraw my foolish, Ignorant opposition." " Oh," she cried, "do you really think " "Take it," he repeated, and closed the door. Hilda sat still for some time after the servant had finished unlacing her shoes. A little tender smile played oddly about her carmincd lips. " Dear heart " she said aloud, " I was going to." * fL il •ed my lad lile rt." CHAPTER XXIII " T WOULD simply give anythin<^ to be there," X Miss Livingstone said, with a look of sincere desire. " I should love to have you, but it isn't possible. You might meet men you knew who had been invited by particular lady friends among the company." ** Oh, well, that of course would be odious." " Very, I should think," Hilda agreed. " You must be satisfied with a faithful report of it. I promise you that." " You have asked Mr. Lindsay," Alicia com- plained. *' That's quite a different thing. And if I hadn't, Llewellyn Stanhope would ; Stanhope cherishes Duff as he cherishes the critic of the CJironicle. He refers to him as a pillar of the legitimate. Whenever he begs me to turn the Norwegian crank, he says, * I'm sure Mr. Lindsay would come.' " Miss Howe was at the top of the staircase in Middleton Street, on the point of departure. It was to be the night of her last appearance for thr season and her benefit, followed by a supper in h honour, at which Mr. Stanhope and his company would take leave of those whose acquaintance, as he expressed it, business and pleasure had given them during the months that were past. It was 261 252 THE PATH OF A STAR this function that Alicia, at the top of the staircase, so ardently desired to attend. "No, I won't kiss \ ou," Hilda said, as the other put her cool cheek forward; " I'm so divinely happy — some of it might escape." Alicia's voice pursued her as she ran downstairs. " Remember," she said, " I don't approve. I don't at all agree either with my reverend cousin or with you. I think you ought to find some other way, or let it go. Go home instead ; go straight to London and insist on your chance. After six weeks you will have forgotten the name of his Order." Hilda looked back with a smile. Her face was splendid with the dawn and the promise of success. " Don't say that," she cried. Alicia, leaning down, was visited by a flash of quotation. ** Well," she said, " nothing in this life becomes you like the leaving of it," and went back to her room to write to Laura Filbert in Plymouth. She wrote often to Miss Filbert, at Duffs request. It gratified her that she was able, without a pang, to address four pages of pleasantly colourless com- munication to Mr. Lindsay's fiancee. Her letters stood for a medicine surprisingly easy to take, aimed at the convalescence which she already anticipated in the future immediately beyond Duff's miserable marriage. If that event had promised felicitously she would have faced it, one fancies, with less sanguine anticipations for herself: but the black disaster that rode on with it brought her certain aids to the spirit, certain hopes of herself. Laura's prompt replies, with their terrible margins and painstaking solecisms, came to be things Miss Livingstone looked forward to. She read them with a beating heart, however, in the unconscious apprehension of some revelation of improvement. THE PATH OF A STAR 1 - -> or di of s life back outh. [uest. 3ang, com- tters imed ated rable usly less lack rtain ura's and Miss hem :ious lent. She was (luite unaware of it, but she cntcrlaincd towards the Simpsons an attitude of misgiving in this regard. Hilda went on about her business. As usual her business was important and imperative ; nothing was lightened for her this last day. She drove about from place to place in the hot, slatternly city, |3utt!iig more than her usual \igour aiul directness into lore was an acute and wear} -looking h'ttle man, w ith a peculiarly sweet smile and an air of cynicism which gave. to his lightest word a dangerous and suspicious air. It was rumoured in official circles that he had narrowly escaped beheading for pointing out too ironically the disabilities of a Viceroy who insisted on reviewing the troops from a cushioned carriage with the horses taken out. h^illimore seemed to think that if nature had n(;t made such a nobleman a horseman, the Oueen-lCmpress should not have made him Governor- General of Intli.i. I^'illiniore was full of prejudices. Gianacchi, however, found it im[)ossible to treat him coldly. His smoothness of temper.iment stood in the w£iy. Instead, he im- parted the melodious information that Miisquito had pecked badly twice at roll)gunge that morning, and smiled with pathetic jjhilosophy. "Always let *em use their noses," said TMllimore, and there seemed to be satire in it. Fillimore certainly had a J?air^ and when lieryl Stace presently demanded of him, " What's the dead bird going to be on Saturday, Filly? " he put it generously at her service. Among tlio friends of Mr. Stanhope and his company were also several gentlemen, content, for their personal effect, with the lustre they shed u|)on the Stock Exchange — gentlemen of high finance, who wrote their names at the end of directors' reports, but never in the visitors' book at Government Mouse, who were little more to the Calcutta world than published receipts for so many lakhs, exccjU when they were seen now and then driving in fleet tiog- carts across the Maidan toward comfortable suburban residences where ladies were not entertained. Ihey were extremely, curiously, devoted to business ; but if they allowed themsel\es any amusement other than company promoting, it was the theatre, of 256 THF. PAIH OF A STAR I which their appreciation had sometimes an odd relation to the merits of performance. This supper, on tlie part of Miss l^eryl Stace and one or two others of Mr. Stanhope's artistes, mii^dit have been considered a return of hospitality to these ^^entlemen, since the surburban residences stood lavishly open to the profession. Alt'ijrethcr, perhaps, there were fifty i eople, and an eye that looked for the sentiment, the pity of things, would have distinguished at once on about half the faces, especially those of the women, the used, underlined look that spoke of the continual play of muscle and forcing of feeling. It gave them a shabbily complicated air, contrasting in a strained and sorry way even with the countenances of the brokers and bankers, where nature had laid on a smooth wash and experience had not interfered. They were all gay and enthusiastic as Miss Howe entered, they loafed forward, broad shirt-fronts lustrous, fat hands in financial pockets, with their admiration, and Fillimore put out his cigarette. Hilda came down among them from the summit of her achievement, clasping their various hands. Tliey were all personally responsible for her success, she made them feel that, and they expanded in the conviction. She moved in a kind of tide of infectious vitality, subtly drawing from every human flavour in the room the power to hold and show something akin to it in herself, a fugitive assimilation floating in the lamplight with the odour of the flowers and the soup, to be extinguished with the occasion. They looked at her up and down the table with an odd smiling attraction, they told each other that she was in great form. Mr. Fillimore was of the opinion that she couldn't be outclassed at the Lyceum, and Mr. Hagge responded with vivacity that there were few places TllK lV\Tn OF A STAR 257 oi •up, :ed jeat Ishe :ge ices where she wouldn't stretch the winner's neck. The feast was not after all (^ne of j^M'eat bounty, Mr. Stanhope justly holdin<; that the «)pportunity, the little ^atherin^^ was the ihiii^, and it was not lon^^ before the moment of celebration arrived for which the gentlemen of the Stock Exchange, to judge frc)m their undraincd glasses, seemed to be reserving them- selves. There certainly had been one tin of pate, and it circulated at that end ; on the other hand the ladies had all the fondants. So that when Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope rose with the sentiment of the evening he found satisfaction, if not repletion, in the regards turned upon him. Llewellyn got up with modest importance, and ran a hand through his yellow hair, not dramatically, but with the effect of collecting his ideas. lie leaned a little forward, he was extremely, liappily conspicuous. The attention of the two lines of faces seemed to overcome him, for an instant, with di//y pleasure; Hilda's beside him was bent a little, waiting. " Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Stanhope, look- ing with precision up and down the table to be still more inclusive, ** we have met together to-night in honour of a lady who has given this city more pleasure- in the exercise of her profession than can be said of any single performer during the last twenty years. Cast your eye back over the theatrical record of Calcutta for that space of time, and you yourselves will admit that there has been nobody that could be said to have come within a mile of her shadow, if I may use the language of metaphor." (Applause, led by Mr. Fillimore.) 'T would ask you to re nember, at the same time, that this i)leasure has been of a superior class. I freely admit that this is a great satisfaction to me personally. T'ar be it from me to put myself forward on this auspicious occasion, but, 17 2^8 THE PATH OF A STAR U I- a \: ladies and gentlemen, if I have one ambition more than another, it is to promote the noble cause of the unfettered drama. To this I may say I have been vowed from the cradle, by a sire who was well-known in the early days of the metropolis of Sydney as a pioneer of the great movement which has made the dramatic talent of Australia what it is. To-day a magnificent theatre rises on the site forever conse- crated to me by those paternal labours, but — but I can never fore^et it. In Miss Hilda Howe I have found a great coadjutor, and one who is willing to consecrate her royal abilities in the same line as myself, so that we have been able to maintain a high standard of production among you, prices remaining as usual. I have to thank you, as representing the public of the Indian capital, for the kind support which has been so encouraging to Miss Howe, the Company, and myself personally, during the past season. Many a time ladies and gentlemen of my profession have said to me, ' Mr. Stanhope, why do you go to Calcut^-.? That city is a death-trap for professionals,' and now the past season proves that I was right and they were wrong ; and the magnificent houses, the enthusiasm, and the appreciation that have greeted our effort;-!, especially on the Saturday evening performances, show plainly enough that when a good thing is available the citizens of Calcutta won't be happy till they get it. Ladies and gentle- men, I invite you to join me in drinking the health, happiness, and prosperity of Miss Hilda Howe." "Miss Howe!" "Miss Howe!" "Miss Hilda Howe !" In the midst of a pushing back of chairs and a movement of feet, the response was quick and universal. Hilda accepted their nods and becks and waving glasses with a slow movement of her beautiful THE PATH OF A STAR 259 eyes and a quiet siTiilc. In the subsidence of sound Mr. Stanhope's voice was heard again, "We can hardly expect a speech from Miss Howe, but perhaps Mr. Hamilton Ikadley,, whose international reputa- tion need hardly be referred to, will kindly say a few words on her behalf." Then with deliberate grace, Hilda rose from her chair, a tall figure among them, looking down with a hint of compassionateness on the litUe man at her left. She stood for an instant without speaking, as if the flushed silence, the expectation, the warm magnetism that drew all their eyes to her were enough. Then out of something like reverie she came to the matter, she threw up her beautiful face with or.e of the supreme gestures which belonged to her. " I think," she said, with a little smiling bow in his direction, "that 1 will not trouble my friend Mr. Bradley. He has rendered me so many kind services already that I am sure I might count upon him again, but this is a thing I should like to do for myself. I would not have my thanks chilled by even the passage from my heart to his." There was some- thing like bravado in the glance that rested lightly on Bradley with this. One would have said that parley of hearts between them was not a thing that as a rule she courted. *' I can only offer you my thanks, poor things to which we can give neither life nor substance, yet I beg that you will somehow take them and remember them. It is to me, and will always he, a kind of crowning satisfaction that you were pleased to come together to-night to tell me I had done well. You know yourselves, and I know, how much too flattering your kindness is, but perhaps it will hurt nobody if to-night I take it as it is generously offered, and let it make me as happy as you intend me to be. At all events, no one could disturb me in believing 26o THE PATH OF A STAR that in obtaining your praise and your good wishes I have done well enough." For a few seconds she stopped speaking, but she held them with her eyes from the mistake of suppos- ing she had done. Lindsay, who was watching her closely and hanging with keen pleasure on the sweet- ness and precision of what she found to say, noted a swift constriction pass upon her face. There was a half-tone of difference, too, in her voice, when she raised it again, a firmer vibration, as if she passed, deliberate and aware, out of one phase into another. " No," she went on, " I am not shy on this occasion ; indeed, I feel that I should like to keep your eyes upon me for a long time to-night, and go on talking far past your patience or my wit. For I cannot think it likely that our ways will cross again." Here her words grew suddenly low and hurried. " If I may trespass upon your interest so much further, I have to tell you that my connection with the stage closes with this evening's performance. To-morrow I join the Anglican Order of the Sisters of St. Paul — the Baker Institution — in Calcutta, as a novice. They have taken me without much question because — because the plague hospiials of this cheerful country" — she contrived a smile — "have made a great demand upon their body. That is all. I have nothing more to say." It was, after all, ineffective, the denouement, or perhaps it was too effective. In any case i. was received in silence, the applause that was ready falling back on itself, inconsistent and absurd. The in- credulity of Llewellyn Stanhope might have been electric had it found words, but that gentleman's protests were made in violent whispers, to which Hilda, who sat playing with a faded rose, seemed to pay no attention whatever. One might have thought THE PATH OF A STAR 261 her more overcome than anyone. She seenied to make one or two unsuccessful efforts to raise her head. There was a moment of waiting for someone to rei)ly ; eyes were turned towards Mr. ]3radley,and when it became plain that no one would, broken murmurs of talk began with a note of deprecation and many shakes of the head. The women, especi- ally, looked tragically at their neighbours with very wide-open eyes. Presently a chair was drawn back, and then another, and people began to filter, in slow' embarrassment, towards the door. Lindsay came up with Hilda's cloak. "You won't mind rny coming with you," he said, *' I should like to hear the details." Beryl Stace made as if to embrace her, pourinp- out abusive disbelief, but Hilda waved her away wfth a gesture almost of irritation. S6me of the others said a perfunctory word or two, and went away with lingering backward looks. In a quarter of an hour, Mr. Lindsay's brougham had followed the other vehicles into the lamp -lit ways of Calcutta, and only the native table-servants reniained in somewhat resentful possession of what was left. il h CHAPTER XXIV r V DufT Lindsay had apj)rchended that the re- 1 ception of Miss Filbert by the Simpsons would involve any strain upon the affection ins friends bore him, the event must have relieved him in no small degree. He was soon made aware of its happy character, and constantly kept assured- indeed, it seemed that whenever Mrs. Simpson had no hing else to do she laid her pen to the task of telling him once again how cherished a satisfaction they found m Laura, and how reluctant they would be to lose it. She wrote in that strain of facile sympathy which seems part of an Englishwoman's education and often begged him to believe that the more she knew of their sweet and heavenly-minded guest the more keenly she realised how dreary for him must have been the pang of parting and how arid the months of separation. Mrs. Simpson herself was well acquainted with these trials of the spirit She and her husband had been divided by those wretched thousands of miles of ocean for three years one week and five days all told during their married life • she knew ^vhat it meant, l^ut if Duff could only see how well and blooming his beloved one was— she had gained twelve pounds already — Mrs. Simpson was sure the time of waiting would pass less heavily, l^or herself, it was cruel but she smiled upon the deferred reunion of hearts, she would keep Laura 262 ^ THE PATH OF A STAR 26 till the very last day, and hoped to establish a permanent claim on her. She was just the daiif^hter Mrs. Simpson would have liked, so unspotted, so pure, so wrapped in high ideals ; and then the page would reflect something of the adoring awe in which Mrs. Simpson would have held such a daughter. It will be seen that Mrs. Simpson knew how to express herself, but there was a fine sincerity behind the mask of words ; Miss Filbert had entered very com- pletely into possession. It had its abnormal side, the way she entered into possession. Everything about Laura Filbert had its abnormal side, none the less obvious because it was inward and invisible. Nature, of course, worked with her, one might say that nature really did it all, since in the end she was practically unconscious, except for the hope that certain souls had been saved, that anything of the sort had happened. She conquered the Simpsons and their friends chiefly by the simple impossibility that they should conquer her, walking immobile among them even while she admired Mr. Simpson's cauliflowers and approved the quality of Mrs. Simpson's house linen. It must be confessed that nothing in her surroundings spoke to her more loudly or more subtly than these things. In view of what happened, poor dear Alicia Livingstone's anticipation that the Simpsons and their circle would have a radical personal effect upon Laura Filbert became ludicrous. They had no effect at all. She took no tint, no curve. She appeared not to see that these precious things were to be had for the assimilation. Her grace remained exclusively that of holiness, and continued to fail to have any relation to the common little things she did and said. The Simpsons were more plastic. Laura had 264 THE PATH OF A STAR been with them hardly a week before Mrs. Sim[).son, with touching humiUty, was trying to remodel her spiritual nature upon the form so fortuitously, if the word is admissible, presented. The dear lady had never before realised, by her ov/n statement, how terribly her religious feelings were mingled with domestic and social considerations, how firmly her spiritual edifice was based upon the things of this world. She felt that her soul was honeycombed — that was her word — with conventionality and false standards, and she made confessions like these to Laura, sitting in the girl's bedroom in the twilight. They were very soothing, these confessions. Laura would take Mrs. Simpson's thin, veined, middle-aged hand in hers and seem to charcre herself for the moment with the responsibility of the elder lady's case. She did not attempt to conceal her pity or even her contempt for Mrs. Simpson's state of grace, she made short work of special services and ladies' Bible classes. The world was white with harvest, and Mrs. Simpson's chief activity was a recreation society for shop girls. But it was something, it was everything, to be uneasy, to be unsatisfied, and they would uplift themselves in prayer, and Laura would find words of such touching supplication in which to represent the matter that the burden of her friend and hostess would at once be lessened by the weight of tears. Mrs. Simpson had never wept so much without perceived cause for grief as since Laura arrived, and this alone would testify, such was the gentle paradox of her temperament, how much she enjoyed Miss Filbert's presence. Laura's room was a temple, for which the gardener daily gave up his choicest blooms, the tenderest interest watched upon her comings and goings, and it was the joy of both the Simpsons to make little THE PATH OF A STAR 265 sacrifices for her, to desert their beloved vicar on a Sunday evening, for instance, and accompany her to the firemen's halls and skating rinks lent to the publishing of the Word in the only manner from which their guest seemed to derive benefit. With all this, the Simpsons were sometimes troubled by the impression that they could not claim to be making their angel in the house completely happy. The air, the garden, the victoria, the turbot and the whitebait, these were all that has been vaunted, and even to the modesty of the Simpsons it was evident that the intimacy they offered their guest should count for something. There were other friends too, young friends who tried to teach her to play tennis, robust and silent )'oung persons who threw shy flushed glances at her in the pauses of the games, and wished supremely, without daring to hint it, that she would let fall some word about her wonderful romance — a hope ever renewed, ever to be dis- appointed. And physically Laura expanded before their eyes. The colour that came into her cheek gave her the look of a person painted by Bouguereau ; that artist would have found in her a model whom he could have represented with sincerity. Yet some- thing was missing to her, her friends v/ere dimly aware. Her desirable surroundings kindled her to but a perfunctory interest in life — the electric spark was absent. Mrs. Simpson relied strategically upon the wedding preparations and hurried them on, announcing in May that it was quite time to think about various cjarments of which the fashion is permanent, but the issue was blank. No ripple stirred the placid waters, unless indeed we take that way of describing Laura's calm demand, when the decision lay between Valenciennes and Torchon lace for under-bodies, to hear whether Mrs. Simpson had 'i I ' 266 THE PATH OF A STAR ever known Duff Lindsay to be anxious about his eternal future. The ^irl continued to give forth a mere pale reflection of her circumstances, and Mrs. Simpson was forced into the deprecation that perhaps one would hardly call her a joyous Christian. But for the Zenana Light Society this impression of Miss Filbert might have deepened. The com- mittee of that body was almost entirely composed of Mrs. Simpson's friends, and naturally came to learn much about her guest. The matter was vastly considered, but finally Miss Filbert was asked to speak at one of the monthly meetings the ladies held among themselves to keep the society " in touch " with the cause. Laura brought them, as one would imagine, surprisingly in touch. She made pictures for them, letting her own eyelashes close deliberately while they stared. She moved these ladies, inspired them, carried them away, and the fact that none of them found themselves able after- ward to quote the most pathetic passages seemed rather to add to the enthusiasm with which they described the address. The first result was a shower of invitations to tea, occasions when Laura was easily led into monologue. Miss Filbert became a cult of evangelistic drawing-rooms, and the same kind of forbearance was extended to her little traces of earlier social experiences as is offered, in salons of another sort, to the eccentricities of persons of genius. Very soon other applications had to be met and considered, and Mrs. Simpson freely admitted that Laura would not be justified in refusing to the Methodists and Baptists what she had given elsewhere. She reasserted her platform influence over audiences that grew constantly larger, and her world began to revolve again in that great relation to the infinities which it was her life to (( in THE PATH OF A STAR 267 perceive and point out. iVIrs. Simpson charged her gemally wth having been miserable in Plymouth unt,l she was allowed to do good in her own way and saw hat she had beef-tea after every occaS and a"l?r • ^^^ ^v''""" '" ■' ^''^ « Public character" and a lady journalist sent an account of her. with a photograph, to a well-known London fashion paper Perhaps the strongest effect she made was a, ?he vo.ce of the Purity Association, when she delivered an address, m the picturesque costume she had abandoned, attacking measures contemplated by Government for the protection of the health of the Army m India This was reported in full in thl local paper and Mr. Simpson sent a copy to Duff Lindsay who received it, I regret to say, with an unmistakable imprecation. But Laura^ rej^ced Deprived of her tambourine she nevertheless re^ joiced exceedingly. 1' I • II '■ 10 CHAPTER XXV THE Mother Superior had a long upper lip, which she was in the habit of drawing still further down ; it gave her an air of great diplomatic caution, almost of casuistry. Her face was pale and narrow ; she had eyes that desired to be very penetrating, and a flat little stooping figure within her voluminous draperies. She carried about with her all the virtues of a monastic order, patience was written upon her, and repression, discipline, and the love of administra- tion, written and underlined, so that the Anglican Sister whom no Pope blessed was more priestly in her personal effect than any Jesuit. It was difficult to remember that she had begun as a woman ; she was now a somewhat anaemic formula making for righteousness. Sister Ann Frances, who in her turn suggested the fat capons of an age of friars more indulgent to the flesh, and whose speech was of the crispest in this world where there was so much to do, thought poorly of the executive ability of the Mother Superior, and resented the imposition, as it were, of the long upper lip. Out of this arose the only irritations that vexed the energetic flow of duty at the Baker Institution, slight official raspings which the Mother Superior immediately laid before Heaven at great length. She did it with publicity, too, kneeling on the chunam floor of the chapel for an hour at a time obviously explaining matters. The 203 THH PATH Ol' A SIWR 269 bureaucracy of tlic country was rctlcclccl in tlic Ikikcr Institution; it seemed to Sister /\nn l*'ranccs that licr superior officer took undue a(lvaiilaL;e of lier privilege of direct communication with the Supreme Authority, giving any colour she liked to the incident. And when the Pvlother Su[)erior's lumbigo came on in direct consecpience of the cold chunam, tlie annoyance of Sister Ann Frances was naturally nc^t lessened. There were twenty or thirty of them, with their little white caps tied close under their chins, their long veils and tlieir girdled black robes. The)' were the most self-sacrificing women in Asia, the most devout, the most useful. Government gave hospitals and doctors into their hands ; they took the whole charge of certain schools. They differed in com- plexion, some of the newly arrived being deH.;htfully fresh and pink under their starched bandeaux ; but they were all official, they all walked discreetly and directly about their business, with a jangle of keys in the folds of their robes, immensely organised, immensely under orders. Hilda, when she had time, had the keenest satisfaction in contemplating them. She took the edge off the fact that she was not quite one, in aim and method, with these dear women as they supposed her to be, with the reflection that after all it might be worth while to work out a solution of life in those terms, standing aside from the world — the world was troublesome — and keeping an unfalter- ing eye upon the pity of things, an unfaltering hand at its assuagement. It was simple and fine and indisputable, this work of throwing the clear shadow of the Cross upon the muddy sunlight of the world ; it carried the boon of finality in itself. One might be stopped and put av/ay at any moment, and nothing would be spoiled, broken, unfinished ; and it absolutely 270 THE PATH OF A STAR barred out such considerations as were presented by Hamilton Bradley. There was a time early in her probation when she thought seriously that if it were not Stephen Arnold it should be this. She begged to be put on hospital work, and was sent for her indiscretion to teach in the Orphanage for Female Children of British Troops. The first duty of a novice was to be free of preference, to obey without a sigh of choice. On the third day, however, Sister Ann Frances, supervising, stopped at the open .schoolroom door to hear the junior female orphans repeating in happy chorus after their instructress the statement that seven times nine were fifty-six. I think Hilda saw Sister Ann Frances in the door. That cc:ddn't go on, even in the name of discipline, and Miss Howe was placed at the disposal of the Chief Nursing Sister at the General Hospital next day. Sister Ann Frances was inclined to defend Hilda's imperfect acquaintance with primary arith- metic. " We all have our gifts," she said. " Miss Howe's is not the multiplication table, but neither is mine stage-acting." At which the upper lip lengthened further into an upward curving smile, and the Mother Superior remarked cautiously that she hoped Miss Howe v/ould develop one for making bandages, otherwise And there for the time being the matter rested. j The depth of what was unusual in Hilda's relation with Alicia Livingstone — perhaps it has been plain that they were not quite the ordinary feminine liens — seems to me to be sounded in the tacit acceptance of Hilda's novitiate on its merits that fell between the two women. The full understanding of it was an abyss between them, across which they joined hands, looking elsewhere. ICvcn in the surprise of Hilda's i ' THE PATH OF A STAR 271 announcement Alicia had the instinct to glance away, lest her eyes should betray too many facts that bore upon the situation. It had never been discussed, but it had to be accepted, and occasionally referred to ; and the terms of acceptance and reference made no implication of Stephen Arnold. In her inmost privacy Alicia gazed breathless at the conception as a whole ; she leaped at it, and caught it and held it to look, with a feverish comparison of possibilities. It was not strange, perhaps, that she took a vivid personal interest in the essentials that enabled one to execute a flank movement like Hilda's, nor that she should conceive the first of them to be that one must come out of a cab. She dismissed that impression with indignation as ungenerously cynical, but it always came back for rcdismissal. It did not interfere in the least, however, with her deliberate invitations to Stephen to come to Ten, Middleton Street, on afternoons or evenings when Hilda was there. She was like one standing denied in the Street of Abundance ; she had an avidity of the eye for even love's reflection. That was a little later. At first there was the transformation to lament, the loss, the break. " You look," cried Miss Livingstone, the first time Hilda arrived in the dress of the novice, a kind of under-study of the Sisters' black and white, "you look like a person in a book, full of salient points, and yet made so simple to the reader. If you go on wearing those things I shall end by understanding you perfectly." *' If you don't understand me," Hilda said, dropping into the corner of a sofa, " Cela que je nicn doutt\ it's because you look for too much elaboration. I am a simple creature, done with rather a broad brush — voila tout ! " 272 THE PATH OF A STAR in Nevertheless, Miss Livingstone's was a happy impression. The neutrality of her hospital dress left Hilda in a manner exposed : one saw in a special way the significance of lines and curves ; it was an astonishingly vigorous human expression. Alicia leaned forward, her elbow on the arm of her chair, her chin tucked into her palm, and looked at it. The elbow bent itself in light blue muslin of extreme elegance, trimmed with lace. The colour found a wistful echo in the eyes that regarded Miss Howe, who was accustomed to the look, and met it with impenetrable commonplace, being made im- patient by nothing in this world so much as by futility, however charming. "Just now," Alicia said, "the shadows under your eyes are brushed too deep." " I don't believe I sleep well in a dormitory." " Horrible ! All the little comforts of life— don't you miss them?" " I never had them, my dear — I never had them. Life has never given me very many luxuries — I don't miss them. An occasional hour to one's self — and that we get even at the Institution. The conventions are strictly conserved, believe me." " One imagines that kind of place is always clean." "When I have time I think of Number Three, Lai Behari's Lane, and believe myself in Paradise. The repose is there, the angels also — dear commanding things — and a perpetual incense of cheap soap. And there is some good in sleeping in a row. It reminds one that after all one is very like other women." " It wouldn't convince me if I were you. And how did the sisters receive you — with the harp and the psaltery?" "That was rather," said Hilda gravely, "what I expected. On the contrary. They snubbed me — THE PATH OF A STAR 273 they really did. There were two of them. I said, ' Reverend ladies, please be a little kind. Convents are strange to me ; I shall probably commit horrible sins without knowing it. Give me your absolution in advance — at least your blessing.' " "Hilda, you didn't!" " It is delightful to observ e the Mother Abbess, or whatever she is, disguising the fact that she takes any interest in me. Such diplomacy — funny old thing." " They must be devoured with curiosity ! " " Well, they ask no questions. One sees an ever- lasting finger on the lip. It's a little boring. One feels inclined to speak up and say, * Mesdames, entendez — it isn't so bad as you think.' But then their fingers would go into their ears." "And the rules, Hilda? I can't imagine you, somehow, under rules." " I am attached to the rules ; I think about them all day long. They make the thing simple and — possible. It is a little like living for the first time in a house all right angles after— after a lifelong voyage in a small boat." " Isn't the house rather empty ? " " Oh, well ! " Alicia put out her hand and tucked an irrelevant bit of lace into Hilda's bosom. " I can tell you who is interested," she cried. "The Archdeacon — the Archdeacon and Mrs. Barberry. They both dined here last night ; and you lasted from the fish to the pudding. I got so bored with you, my dear, in your new capacity." A new ray of happiness came into the smile of the novice. " VVhat did they say? Do tell me what they said." "There was a difference of opinion. The Arch- 18 274 THE PATH OF A STAR deacon held that with God all things were possible. He used an expression more suitable to a dinner- party ; but I think that is what he meant. Mrs. Barberry thought it wouldn't last. Mrs. Barberry was very cynical. She said anyone could see that you were as emotional as ever you could be." The eyes of the two women met, and they laughed frankly. A sense of expansion came between them, in which for an instant they were silent. "Tell me about the hospital," Alicia said presently. " Ah, the hospital ! " Hilda's face changed; there came into her eyes the moved look that always waked a thrill in Alicia Livingstone, as if she were suddenly aware that she had stepped upon ground where feet like hers passed seldom. "There is nothing to tell you that is not — sad. Such odds and ends of life, thrown together ! " " Have you had any experiences yet ? " Hilda stared for a moment 'absently in front of her, and then turned her head aside to answer as if she closed her eyes on something. " Experiences ? Delightful Alicia, speaking your language, no. You are thinking of the resident surgeon, the medical student, the interesting pa i lent, iviy resident surgeon is fifty years old ; the medical student is a Bengali in white cotton and patent leather shoes. I am occupied in a ward full of deck hands. For these I hold the bandage and the bottle ; they are hardly aware of me." "You are sure to have them," Alicia said. "They crop up wherever you go in this world, either before you or behind you." Hilda fixed her eyes attentively upon her companion. "Sometimes," she said, "you say things that are extremely true in their general bearing. A fortune- teller with cards gives one the same shock of surprise. THE PATH OF A STAR 275 Well, let me tell you, I have been promoted to temperatures. I took thfrty-five to-day. Next week I am to make poultices ; the week after, baths and fomentations. ''What are the others like-the other novices ?" Nearly ill Eurasians, one native, a Hindu widow —the bisters are almost demonstrative to her— and one or two local European girls : the commissariat sergeant class, I should think." "They don't sound attractive, and I am glad, iou will depend the more upon me" Hilda looked thoughtfully at Miss Livingstone. I will depend, she said, "a good deal upon you " It was Alicia's fate to meet the Archdeacon atrain that evening at dinner. " And is she really thmwinir her heart into the work?" asked that dignitary, referring to Miss Howe. ^ " Oh, 1 think so," Alicia said. " Yes." CHAPTER XXVI '"T^ME labours of the Baker Institution and of the i Clarke Mission were very different in scope, so much so that if they had been secular bodies working for profit, there would have been hardly a point of contact between them. As it was they made one, drawing together in affiliation for the comfort of mutual support in a heathen country where all the other Englishmen wrote reports, drilled troops, or played polo, with all the other English- women in the corresponding female parts. Doubtless the little communities prayed for each other. One Hiay imagine, not profanely, their petitions rising on either side of the heedless, multitudinous, idolatrous city., and meeting at some point in the purer air above the yellow dust-haze. I am not aware that they held any other mutual duty or privilege, but this bond v/as known, and enabled people whose conscience pricked them in that direction to give little garden teas to which they invited Clarke Brothers and Baker Sisters, secure in doing a benevolent thing and at the same time embarrassing nobody except, possibly, the Archdeacon, who was officially exposed to being asked as well and had no right to complain. The affiliation was thus a social convenience, since it is unlikely that without it anybody would have hit upon so ingenious a way of killing, as it were, a Baker Sister and a Clarke 276 le THE PATH OF A STAR 277 Brother with one stone. It is not surprisinj,^ that this degree of intelligence should fail to see the profound official difference between Baker Sisters and Baker novices. As the Mother Superior said, it did not seem to occur to people that there could be in connection with a religious body, such words as discipline and subordination, which were certainly made ridiculous for the time being, when she and Sister Ann Frances were asked to eat ices on the same terms as Miss Hilda Howe. It must have been more than ever painful to these ladies, regarded from the official point of view, when it became plain, as it usually did, that the interest of the afternoon centred in Miss Howe, whether or not the Arch- deacon happened to be present. Their displeasure was so clear, after the first occasion, that Hilda felt obliged when the next one came, to fall back on her original talent, and ate her ice abashed and silent speaking only when she was spoken to, and then in short words and long hesitations. Thereupon the Sisters were of opinion that after all poor Miss Howe could not help her unenviable lot, she was perhaps more to be pitied on account of it than — anything else. It came to this, that Sister Ann Frances even had an exhibitor's pride in her, and Hilda knew the sensations of a barbarian female captive in the bonds of the Christians. But she could not afford to risk being cut off from those little garden teas. All told, they were few ; ladies disturbed by ideas of social duties toward missionaries being so uncommon. She told Stephen so, frankly, one afternoon when he charged her with being so unlike herself, and he heard her explanation with a gravity which contained an element of satisfaction. "It is, of course, a pleasure to us to meet," he said, " a pleasure to us both." That was part of the satisfaction, that he 27cS THE PATH OF A STAR could meet her candour with the same openness. He was not even afraid to mention to her the stimulus she gave him ahvays and his difficulty in defining it, and once he told her how, after a talk with her, he had laiii awake until the small hours unable to stop his excited rush of thought. He added that he was now personally and selfishly glad she had chosen as she did three months before ; it made a difference to him, her being in Calcutta,a sensible and material difference. He had better hope and heart in his work. It was the last luxury he would ever have dreamed of allow- ing himself, a woman friend ; but since life had brought it in the oddest way the boon should be met with no grudging of gratitude. A kind of sedate cheerfulness crept into his manner which was new to him ; he went about his duties with the look of a man to whom life had dictated its terms and who found them acceptable. His blood might have received some mysterious chemical complement, so much was his eye clearer, his voice firmer, and the things he found to say more decisive. Nor did any considera- tion of their relations disturb him. He never thought of the oxygen in the air he breathed, and he seldom thought of Hilda. They were walking toward the Institution together the day he explained to her his gratification that she had elected to remain. Sister Ann Frances and Sister Margaret led; Arnold and Hilda came behind. He had an errand to the Mother Superior — he would go all the way. It was late in May and late in the afternoun ; all the treetops on the Maidan were bent under the sweep of the south wind, blowing a caressing coolness from the sea. It spread fragrances about and shook down blossoms from the gold-mohur trees. One could see nothing anywhere, so red and yellow as they were, except the long coat of a Government 1 1 THE PATH OF A STAR 279 messenger, a point of scarlet moving in the perspective of a dusty road The spreading acres of turf were baked to every earth-colour ; wherever a pine dropped needles and an old woman swept them up, a trail of dust ran curling along the ground like smoke. The little party was unusual in walking ; glances of un- comprehending pity were cast at them from victorias and landaus that rolled past. Even the convalescent British soldiers facing each other in the clumsy drrb cart drawn by humped bullocks, and marked Garrison Dispensary, stared at the black skirts so near the powder of the road. The Sisters in front walked with their heads slightly bent toward one another ; they seemed to be consulting. Hilda reflected, looking at them, that they always seemed to be consulting ; it was the normal attitude of that long black veil that flowed behind. Arnold walked beside his companion, his hands loosely clasped behind him, with the air of semi- detachment that young clergymen sometimes have with their wives. Whether it was that, or the trace of custom his satisfaction carried, the casual glance might easily have taken them for a married pair. " There is a kind of folly and stupidity in saying it," he said, "but you have done — you do — a great deal for me." She turned toward him with a wistful, measuring look. It searched his face for an instant and came back baffled. Arnold spoke with so much kindness, so much appreciation. " Very little," she said mechanically, looking at the fresh footprints of Sister Ann Frances and Sister Margaret. " But I know. And can't you tell me— it would make me so very happy — that I have done somethini,^ for you too — something that you value? " I I 280 THE PATH OF A STAR Hilda's eyes Hf^htened curiously, reverie came into them, and a smile. She answered as if she spoke to herself, " I should not know how to tell you." Then scenting wonder in him she added, " You were thinking of something — in particular?" " You have sometimes made me believe," Stephen returned, "that I may account myself, under God, the accident which induced you to take up your blessed work. I was thinking of that." " Oh," she said, " of that ! " and seemed to take refuge in silence. " Yes," Arnold said, with infinite gentleness. " But you were profoundly the cause ! I might say you are, for without you I doubt whether I should have the — courage " " Oh no ! Oh no ! He who inspired you in the beginning will sustain you to the end. Think that. Believe that." " Will He ? " Her voice was neutral, as if it would not betray too much, but there was a listlcssncss that spoke louder in the bend of her head, the droop of her shoulder. " For you perhaps," Arnold said tlioughtfully, "there is only one assurance of it — the satisfaction your vocation brings you now. That will broaden and increase," he went on, almost with buoyancy, " growing more and more your supreme good as the years go on." " How much you give me credit for ! " "Not nearly enough — not nearly. Who is there like you ? " he demanded simply. His words seemed a baptism. She lifted up her face after them, and the trace of them was on her ! I eyes and lips. " I have passed two examinations, at I I all events," she informed him, with sudden gaiety, " and Sister Ann Frances says that in two or three i \ ime into spoke to 3, "You Stephen er God, jp your to take light say [ should u in the ink that. it would less that droop of ghtfully, isfaction broaden loyancy, d as the is there \ up her 1 on her itions, at I gaiety, or three Q s a v, en u £2 IS ^ H 'A A C c O w a o i THE PATH OF A STAR 281 months I shall probably get through the others. Sister Ann Frances thinks me more intelligent than might be expected. And if I do pass those examina- tions I shall be what they call a quick-time probationer. I shall have got it over in six months. Do you think," she asked, as if to please lierself, " that six months will be long enough ? " " It depends. There is so much to consider." " Yes — it depends. Sometimes I think it will be, but oftener I think it will take longer." " I should be inclined to leave it entirely with the Sisters." " I am so undisciplined," murmured Hilda, " I fear I shall cling to my own opinion. Now we must over- take the others and you must walk the rest of the way with Sister Ann — no. Sister Margaret, she is senior." " I don't at all see the necessity," Stephen protested. He was wilful and wayward ; he adopted a privileged air, and she scolded him. In their dispute they laughed so imprudently that Sister Ann Frances turned her draped head to look back at them. Then they quickened their steps and joined the elder ladies, and Stephen walked with Sister Margaret to the door of the Institution. She mentioned to the M ither Superior afterwards that young Mr. Arnold was really a delightful conversationalist. CHAPTER XXVII '^T'^HEY talked a great deal in Plymouth about the X way the time was passing in Calcutta during those last three months before Laura should return, the months of the rains. " Now," said Mrs. Simpson, early in July, " it will be pouring every day, with great patches of the Maidan under water, and rivers, my dear, rivers^ in the back streets " ; and Laura had a reminiscence about how, exactly at that time, a green mould used to spread itself fresh every morning on the matting under her bed in Bentinck Street. Later on they would agree that perhaps by this time there was a *' break in the rains," and that nothing in the world was so trying as a break in the rains, the sun grilling down and drawing up steam from every puddle. In Septenaber, things, they remembered, would be at their very worst and most depressing ; one had hardly the energy to lift a finger in September. Mrs. Simpson looked back rpon the discomfort she had endured in Bengal at this time of year with a kind of regret that it was irretrievably over ; she lingered upon a severe illness which had been part of the experience. She seemed to think that with a little judicious management she might have spent more time in that climate, and less in England. There was in her tone a suggestion of gentle env\' of Laura, goingf forth to these dismal conditions with her young life in her hands all tricked out for the 282 my THE PATH OF A STAR 283 sacrifice, which left Duff Lindsay and his white and gold drawing-room entirely out of consideration. Any sacrifice to Mrs. Simpson was alluring, she would be killed all day long, in a manner, for its own sake. The victim had taken her passage early in October, and during the first week of that month Plymouth gathered itself into meetings to bid her farewell. A curiously sacred character had fastened itself upon her; it was not in the least realised that she was going out to be married to an altogether secular young broker moving in fashionable circles in one of the gayest cities in the world. One or two reverend persons in the course of commending their young sisf.er to the protection of the Almighty in her approaching separation from the dear friends who surrounded her in Plymouth, made references im- plying that her labours would continue to the glory of God, taking it as a matter of course. Miss Filbert was by this time very much impregnated with the idea that they would, she did not know precisely how, but that would open itself out. Duff had long been assimilated as part of the programme. All that money and humility could contribute should be forthcoming from him ; she had a familiar dream of him as her standard-bearer, undistinguished but for ever safe. Yet it was with qualified approval that Mrs. Simpson, amid the confusion of the CoromandePs preparations for departure at London Docks, heard the inevitable strains of the Salvation Army rising aft Laura immediately cried, " I shall have friends among the passengers," and Mrs. Simpson so far forgot herself as to say, " Yes, if they are nice." The ladies were sittinij: on deck beside the pile of Laura's very superior cabin luggage. Mrs. Siinpson glanced 284 THE PATH OF A STAR at it as if it offered a kind of corroboration of the necessity of their being nice. " There are always a few dehghtful Christian |;ecple, if one takes the trouble to find them out, at this end of the ship," she said defensively. " I have never failetl to find it so." " I don't think much of Christians who are so hard to discover," Laura said w^ith decision; and Mrs. Simpson, rebuked, thought of the mischievous nature of class prejudices. Laura herself — had she not been drawn from what one might call distinctly the other end of the ship ? — and who, among those who vaunted themselves ladies and gentlemen, could compare with Liura! The idea that she had shown a want of sympathy with those dear people who were so strenuously calling down a blessing on the Coi'O- niandcl somewhere behind the smoke stacks, em- bittered poor Mrs, Simpson's remaining tears of farewell, and when the bell rang the signal for the last good-bye, she embraced her young friend with the fervent request, " Do make friends with them, dear one — make friends with them at once " ; and Laura said, " If they will make friends with me." By the time the ship had well got her nose down the coast of Spain, Miss Filbert had created her atmosphere, and moved about in it from end to end of the quarter-deck. It was a recognisable thing, her atmosphere, one never knew when it would discharge a question relating to the gravest matters ; and persons unprepared to give satisfaction upon this point — one fears there are some on a ship bound east of Suez — found it blighting. They moved their long chairs out of the way, they turned pointedly indifferent backs, the lady who shared Miss Filbert's cabin — she belonged to a smart cavalry regiment at Mhow — went about saying things with a distinct edge. Miss Filbert exhausted all the means. She I I I THE PATH OF A STAR 265 )f the a few 'ouble aid 2 s 3 hard Mrs. nature t been 1 other Hinted •e with ant of 2 re so Coro- s, em- jars of for the ath the n, dear Laura e down :ed her to end ing, her scharge and on this bound ed their )inted;y ilbert's ment at distinct s. She attempted to hold a meeting forward of the smoking cabin, >tanding for elevation on one of the ship's quoit buckets to preach, but with this the captain was reluctantly compelled to interfere on behalf of the whist-players inside. In the evening, after dinner, she established herself in a sheltered corner and sang. Her recovered voice lifted itself with infinite pathetic sweetness in songs about the poverty of the world and the riches of heaven ; the notes mingled with the churnin<^ of the screw, and fell in the darkness beyond the ship's lights abroad upon the sea. The other passengers listened aloof; the Coroniatidel was crowded, but you could ha\'e drawn a wide circle round her chair. On the morning of the fourth day out — she had not felt quite well enough for adven- tures before — she found her way to the second-class saloon, being no doubt fully justified of her conscience in abandoning the first to the flippancies of its pre- ference. In the second-class end the tone was certainly more like that of Plymouth. Laura had a grateful sense of this in coming, almost at once, upon a little group gathered together for praise and prayer, of which four or five persons of both sexes, labelled " S. A.," naturally formed the centre. They were not only praying and praising without discourage- ment, they had attracted several other people who had brought their chairs into near and friendly relation, and even joined sometimes in the chorus of the hymns. There was a woman in mourning who cried a good deal — her tears seemed to refresh the Salvationists and inspire them to louder and more cheerful efforts. There was a man in a wide, soft felt hat with the malaria of the Terai in the hollows under his eyes ; there was a Church Missionary with an air of charity and forbearance, and the buslw -eyed colonel I t i I 286 THE PA'iH OF A STAR of a native regiment looking vij^ilant against ridicule, with his wife, whose round red little face continually waxed and waned in a smile of true contentment. It was not till later that Laura came to know them all so very well, but her eye rested on them one after another, with approval, as she drew near. Without pausing in his chant — it happened to be one of triumph — without even looking at her, the leader indicated an empty chair. it was his own chair. " Colonel Markin, S. A." was printed in black letters on its striped canvas back ; Laura noticed that. After it was over, the little gathering, Colonel Markin specially distinguished her. He did it deli- catel)'. *' I hope you won't mind my expressin' my thanks for the help you gave us in the singin','' he said. " Such a voice I've seldom had the pleasure to join with. May I ask where you got it trained ? " He was a narrow-chested man with longish sandy hair and thin features. His eyes were large, blue, and protruding, his forehead very high and white. There was a pinkness about the root of his nose, and a scanty yellow moustache upon his upper lip, while his chin was partly hidden by a beard equally scanty and even more > ellow. He had extremely long white hands ; one could not help observing them as they clasped his book of devotion. Laura looked at him with profound appreciation ol these details. She knew Colonel Markin by reputa- tion, he had done a great work among the Cingalese. " It was trained," she said, casting down her eyes, "on the battlefields of our Army." Colonel Markin attempted to straighten his shoulders and to stiffen his chin. He seemed vaguely aware of a military tradition which might make it necessary for him, as a very senior officer indeed, to say something. But the impression was THE PATH OF A STAR 287 transitory. Instead of using any rigour he held out his hand. Laura took it reverently, and the bones shut up, like the sticks of a fan, in her grasp. " Welcome, comrade ! " he said, and there was a pause, as there should be after such an apostr(jphe. " When you came among us this afternoon," Colonel Markin resumed, " I noticed you. There was something abo'Jt the way you put your hand over your eyes when I addressed our Heavenly Father that spoke to me. It spoke to me and said, * Here we have a soul that knows what salvation means — there's no doubt about that.' Then when you raised a Hallelujah I said to myself, ' That's got the right ring to it.' And so you're a sister in arms!" " I was," Laura murmured. "You was — you were. Well, well — I want to hear all about it. It is now," continued Colonel IMarkin, as two bells struck and a steward passed them with a bugle, " the hour for our dinner, and I suppose that you too," he bent his head respectfully towards the other half of the ship, "partake of some meal at this time. But if you will seek us out again at the meet- ing between four and five I shall be at your service afterwards, and pleased," he took her hand again, ^''pleased to see you." Laura went back to the evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign her original place at table and take a revolving chair at the nine o'clock breakfast, one o'clock dinner, and six o'clock tea which sustained the second saloon. Daily ascending the companion ladder to the main 288 THE PATH OF A STAR ! deck aft she gradually faded from cognisance forward. j ;' There they lay back in their long chairs and sipped their long drinks, and with neutral eyes and lips they ,;j let the blessing go. In the intervals between the exercises Miss Filbert came and went in the cabin of three young Salva- tionists of her own sex. They could always make room for her, difficult as it may appear; she held for them an indefinite store of fascination. Laura would extend herself on a top berth beside the round- eyed Norwegian to whom it belonged, with the cropped head of the owner pillowed on her sisterly arm, and thus they passed hours, discussing conver- sions as medical students might discuss cases, relating, comparing. They talked a great deal about Colonel Markin. They said it was a beautiful life. More beautiful if possible had been the life of Mrs. Markin, who was his second wife, and who had been "promoted to glory" six months before. She had gained pro- motion through jungle fever, which had carried her off in three days. The first Mrs. Markin had died of drink — that was what had sent the Colonel into the Army, she, the first Mrs. Markin, having willed her property away from him. Colonel Markin had often rejoiced publicly that the lady had been of this disposition, the results to him had been so blessed. Apparently he spoke without reserve of his domestic affairs in connection with his spiritual experiences, using both the Mrs. Markins when it was desirable as " illustrations." The five had reached this degree of intimacy by the time the Coroniandel was nearing Port Said, and every day the hemispheres of sea and sky they watched through the porthole above the Norwegian girl's berth grew bluer. From the first Colonel Markin had urged Miss Filbert's immediate return to the Army. He found THE PATfl OF A STAR 289 her sympatlietic to the idea, willing indeed to embrace it with open arms, but there were difficulties. Mr. Lindsay, as a difficulty, was almost insuperable to anything like a prompt step in that direction. Colonel Markin admitted it himself. He was bound to admit it he said, but nothing, since he joined the Army, had ever been so painful to him. " I wish I could deny it," he said with frankness ; " but there is no doubt that for the present your first duty is towards your gentleman, towards him who placed that ring upon your finger." There was no sarcasm in his describing Lindsay as a gentleman ; he used the term in a kind of extra special sense where a person less accustomed to polite usages might have sj:)oken of Laura's young man. " But remember, my child," he continued, " it is only your poor vile body that is yours to dispose of, your soul belongs to God Almighty, and no earthly husband, es]3ecially as you say he is still in his sins, is going to have the right to interfere." This may seem vague as the statement of a position, but Laura found it immensely fortifying. That and similar arguments built her up in her determination to take up what Colonel Markin called her life-work again at the earliest opportunity. She had forfeited her rank, that slie accepted humbly as a proper punishment, ardently hoping it would be found sufficient. She would go back as a private, take her place in the ranks, and nothing in her married life should interfere with the things that cried out to be done in Bentinck Street. Somehow she had less hope of securing Lindsay as a spiritual companion in arms since she had confided the afiViir to Colonel Markin. As he said, they must hope for the best, but he could not help admitting that he took a gloomy view of Lindsay. "Once he has secured you," the Colonel said, with 19 290 THE PArii OF A STAR an appreciative glance at Laura's complexion, " what will he care about his soul? Nothing." Their enthusiasm had ample opportunity to strengthen, their mutual sniisfactions to expand, in the close confines of life on board ship, and as if to seal and sanctify the voyage permanently a con- version took place in the second saloon, owning Laura's agency. It was the maid of the lady in the cavalry regiment, a hardened heart, as two stewards and a bandmaster on board could testify. When this occurred the time that was to elapse between Laura's marriage and her return to the ranks was shortened to one week. " And quite long enough," Colonel Markin said, "considering how much more we need you than your gentleman does, my dear sister." It was plain to them all that Colonel Markin had very special views about his dear sister. The other dear sisters looked on with pleasurable interest, admitting the propriety of it, as Colonel Markin walked up and down the deck with Laura, examining her lovely nature, "drawing her out" on the subject of her faith and her assurance. It was natural, as he told her, that in her peculiar situation she should have doubts and difficulties. He urged her to lay bare her heart, and she laid it bare. One evening — it was heavenly moonlight on the Indian Ocean, and they were two days past Aden on the long south-east run to Ceylon — she came and stood before him with a small packet in her hand. She was all in white, and more like an angel than Markin expected ever to see anything in this world, though as to the next his anticipations may have been extravagant. " Now I wonder," said he, " where you are going to sit down ? " A youngster in the Police got up and pushed his chair forward, but Laura shook her head. was THE PATH OF A STAR 291 " I am going out there," she said, pointing to the farthermost stern where passengers were not en- couraged to sit, "and I want to consult you." Markin got up. " If there's anything pressin' on your mind," he said, "you can't do better." Laura said nothing until they were alone with the rushing of the screw, two Lascars, some coils of rope, and the hand -steering gear. Then she opened the packet. " These," she said, " these are pressing on my mind." She held out a' string of pearls, a necklace of pearls and turquoises, a heavy band bracelet studded, Delhi fashion, with gems, one or two lesser fantasies. *' Jewellery ! " said Markin. " Real or imitation ? " " So far as that goes they are good. Mr. Lindsay L^ave them to me. But what have I to do with jewels, the very emblem of the folly of the world, the desire that itches in palms that know no good works, the price of sin ! " She leaned against the masthead j^s she spoke, the wind blew her hair and her skirt out toward the following stas. W ith that look in her eyes she seemed a creature who had alighted on the ship but who could not stay. Colonel Markin held the penrls up in the moonlight. " They must have cost something to buy," he said. Laura was silent. " And so they're a trouble to you. Have )'ou taken them to the Lord in prayer?" " Oh, many times." "Couldn't seem to hear any answer?" " The only answer I could hear was. ' So long as you have them I will not speak with you.'" "That seems pretty plain and clear. And yet?" said the Colonel, fondling the turquoises, " nobody can say there's any harm in such things, especially if jou don't wear them." 292 THE PATH OF A STAR " Colonel, they are my great temptation. I don't know that 1 wouldn't wear them. And when I wear them I can think of nothinij sacred, nothing holy. When they were given to me I used — I used to get up in the night to look at them." •Shall I lay it before the Almighty? That bracelet's got a remarkably good clasp." " Oh no — no ! I must part with them. To-night 1 can do it, to-night " "There's nobody on this ship that will give you any price for them." " I would not think of selling them. It would be sending them from my hands to do harm to some other poor creature, weaker than I ! " " You can't return them to-night." " I wouldn't return them. That would be the same as keeping them." " Then what — oh, I see ! " exclaimed Markin. " You want to give them to the Army. Well, in my capacity, on behalf of General Booth " " No," cried Laura with sudden excitement, " not that either. I will give them to nobody. But this is what I will do ! " She seized the bracelet and flung it far out into the opaline track of the vessel, and the smaller objects, before her companion could stop her, followed it. Then he caught her wrist. " Stop ! " he cried. " You've gone off your head — you've got fever. You're acting wicked with that jewellery. Stop and let i^s reason it out together." She already had the turquoises, and with a jerk of her left hand, she freed it and threw them after the rest. The necklace caught the handrail as it fell, and Markin made a vain spring to save it. He turned and stared at Laura, who stood fighting the greatest puissance of feeling she had known, looking at the pearls. As he stared she kissed them twice, and I don't I wear I holy, to ^Lt That light 1 e you Lild be some same "You 1 my "not :his is mg it d the 3 her, lad — that r." rkof r the , and rned atcst : the and S!IK I.KT IIIKM SLOWLY SLI!)K OIT OK IIKK KIXCiKHS lXTt» IIIK WA\ I H HKLOW THE PATH OF A STAR 293 then, Icaniiii; over the sliip's side, let them slowly slide out oflier fin«,rers and fall into the waves below. The moonh\L;ht gave them a divine gleam as Ihey fell. She turned to Markin with tears in her eyes. " Now," she faltered, ** I can be happy again. But not to-night." CHAPTER XXVIII WHILE the Coromandel was throbbing out her regulation number of knots towards Colombo, October was passing over Bengal. It went with lethargy, the rains were too close on its heels ; but at the end of the long hot days, when the resplendent sun struck down on the glossy trees and the over-lush Maidan, there often stole through Calcutta a breath of the coming respite of December. The blue smoke of the people's cooking fires began to hang again in the streets, the pungent smell of it was pleasant in the still air. The south wind turned back at the Sunderbunds ; instead of it, one met round corners a sudden crispness that stayed just long enough to be recognised and melted damply away. A week might have two or three of such promises and foretastes. Hilda Howe, approaching the end of her probation at the Baker Institution, threw the dormitory window wide to thenx, .vent out to seek them. They gave her a new stirring of vitality, something deep within her leaped up responding to the voucher the evenings brought that presently they would bring something new and different She vibrated to an irrepressible pulse of accord with that ; it made her hand strong and her brain clear for the unimportant matters that remained within the scope of the monotonous moment. There had cumc upon her a stimulating ng out :o wards al. It : on its >, when jy trees hroLi began mell of h wind it, one stayed melted hree of )bation vindovv y gave within ^enings lething ■essible strong natters •tonous ulating THE PATH OF A STAR 295 assurance that it would be only a moment — now. She did not consider this, she could hardly be said to be intelligently aware of it, but it underlay all that she said and did. Her spirits gained an enviable lightness, she began again to see beautiful, touching things in the life that carried her on with it. She explained to Stephen Arnold that she was im- mensely happy at having passed the last of her nursing examinations. " I hardly dare ask you," he said, " what you are going to do now." He looked furtive and anxious ; she saw that he did, and the perception irritated her. She had to tell herself that she had given him the right to look in any way he pleased — indeed yes. " I hardly dare ask myself," she answered, and was immediately conscious that for the first time in the history of their relations she had spoken to him that which was expedient. " I hope the Sisters are not trying to influence you," he said firmly. " Fancy 1 " she cried irrelevantly. " I heard the other day that Sister Ann Frances had described me as the pride of the Baker Institution ! " She laughed v/ith delight at the humour of it, and he smiled too. When she laughed, he had nearly always now confidence enough to smile too. "You migl't ask for another six months." " Heavens, nv ! No— I shall make up my mind." "Then you may go away," Arnold said. They were standing at the crossing of the wide red road from which they would go in different directions. She saw that the question was momentous to him. She also saw how curiously the sun sallowed him, and how many more hollows he had in his face than most people. She had a pathetic impression 296 THE PATH OF A STAR of the figure he made in his coarse gown and shoes. ^ bods wayfarer, she murmured. There was pitv in her mmd, infinite pity. Her thought had no other tmge. It was a curiously simple feeling, and seemed to bring her an inconsistent lightness of heart. ^ "Come too," she said aloud, "come and be a Clarke Brother where the climatic conditions suit you better The world wants Clarke Brothers everywhere. He looked at her and tried to smile, but his lips quivered. He opened them in an e%rt to speak gave It up, and turned away silently, lifting his hat' Hilda watched him for an instant as he went Hi.s hgure took strange proportions through the tears that sprang to her eyes, and she marvelled at the gaiety with vyhich she had touched, had almost revealed, her heart's desire. ••(idiis wAVKAiiiu. siii: .Mti{Mri;i;i>. I 'I 1:' I! CHAPTER XXIX I KNEW it would happen in the end," Hilda said, "and it has happened. The Archdeacon has asked me to tea." She was speaking to Alicia Livingstone in the dormitory, changing at the same time for a " turn " at the hospital. It was six o'clock in the afternoon. Alicia's landau stood at the door of the Baker Institution. She had come to find that Miss Howe was just going on duty and could not be taken for a drive. "When?" asked Alicia, staring out of the window at the crows in a tamarind tree. " Last Saturday. He said he had promised some friends of his the pleasure of meeting me. They had besieged him, he said, and they were his best friends, on all his committees." "Only ladies?" The crows, with a shriek of defiance at nothing in particular, having flown away Miss Livingstone transferred her attention. ."Bless me, yes. What Archdeacon has dear men friends ! And lesquellcs pense-tu, mon Dieu f " "Lesquelles?" "Mrs. Jack Forrester, Mrs. Fitz-what you may call him up on the frontier, the Brigadier jrentleman —Lady Dolly ! " ^ *. "You were well chaperoned." "And— my dear— he didn't ask a single Sister!" 21)7 298 THE PATH OF A STAR Hilda turned upon her a face which appeared still to glow with the stimulus of the archidiaconal function. "And — it was wicked considering the occasion — I dropped the character. I let myself out ! " " You didn't shock the Archdeacon ? " "Not in the least. But, my dear love, did you ever permit yourself the reflection that the Venerable Gambell is a bachelor ? " "Hilda, you shall not! We all love him— you shall not lead him astray ! " "You would not think of— the altar?" Miss Livingstone's pale small smile fell like a snowflake upon Hilda's mood, and was swallowed up. "You are very preposterous," she said. "Go on. You always amuse one." Then, as if Hilda's going on were precisely the thing she could not quite endure, she said quickly, " The Coromandcl is telegraphed from Colombo to-day." "Ah! "said Hilda. " He leaves for Madras to-morrow. The thing is to take place there, you know." " Then nothing but shipwreck can save him." " Nothing but— what a horrible idea ! Don't you think they may be happy? I really think they may." " There is not one of the elements that give people, when they commit the paramount stupidity of marry- ing, reason to hope that they may not be miserable. Not one. If he were a strong man I should pity him less. But he's not. He's immensely dependent on his tastes, his friends, his circumstances." Alicia looked at Hilda; her glance betrayed an attention caught upon an accidental phrase. "The paramount stupidity." She did not repeat it aloud, she turned it over in her mind. THE PATH OF A STAR 299 d still iconal g the Tiyseif d you lerable I — you like a 11 owed "Go rlilda's Id not ndcl is hing is I't you they Deople, marry- erable. d pity endent 'cd an 'The aloud, " You are tliinking," Hilda said accusingly. " What arc you thinking about?" *' Oh, nothing. I saw Stciihcn )'osterday. I thought him looking ratb.cr wretched." A shadow of grave consideration winged itself across Hilda's eyes. *' He works so much too hard," she said. " It is an appalling waste. But he will offer himself up." Alicia looked unsatisfied. She had hoped for something that would throw more light upon the paramount stupidity. " He brought Mr. Lappe to tea," she said. The shadow went. " Should you think Brother Lappe," Miss Howe demanded, " specially fitted for the cure of souls? Never, never, could I allow the process of my regeneration to come through Brother Lappe. He has such a little nose, and such wide pink cheeks, and such fat sloping shoulders. Dear succulent Brother Lappe ! " A Sister passed through the dormitory on a visit of inspection. Alicia bowed sweetly, and the Sifter inclined herself briefly with a cloistered smile. As she disappeared Hilda threw a black skirt over her head, making a veil of it flowing backward, and rendered the visit, the noiseless measured step, the little deprecating movements of inquiry, the benevo- lent recognition of a visitor from a world where people carried parasols and wore spotted muslins. She even effaced herself at the door on the track of the other to make it perfect, and came back in the happy expansion of an artistic effort to find Alicia's regard penetrated with the light of a new conviction. " Hilda," she said, *' I should like to know what this last year has really been to you." "It has been very valuable," Miss Howe replied. Then she turned quickly away to hang up the black 300 THE PATH OF A STAR petticoat, and stood like that, shaking out its-folds, so that Alicia might not see anything curious in her face as she heard her own words and understood what they meant. Very valuable ! She did under- stand, suddenly, completely. Very valuable ! A year of the oddest experiences, a pictorial year, which she would look back upon, with its core in a dusty priest. . . . A probationer came rapidly along the dormitory to where Hilda stood. She had the olive checks and the liquid eyes of the country ; her lips were parted in a smile. "Miss Howe," she said, in the quick clicking syllables of her race, " Sister Margaret wishes you to come immediately to the surgical war J. A case has come in, and Miss Gonsalvez is there, but Sister Margaret will not be bothered with Miss Gonsalvez. She says you are due by right in five minutes," — the messenger's smile broadened irresponsibly, and she put a fondling touch upon Hilda's apron string, — " so will you please to make haste ! " "What's the case?" asked Hilda; "I hope it isn't another ship's hold accident." But Alicia, a shade paler than before, put up her hand. " Wait till I'm gone," she said, and went quickly. The girl had opened her lips, however, but to say that she didn't know, she had only been seized to take the message, though it must be something serious since they had sent for both the resident surgeons. CHAPTER XXX DR. LIVINGSTONE'S concern was personal, that was plain in the way he stood looking al the floor of the corridor with his hands in his pockets, before Hilda reached him. Regret was written all over the lines of his pausing figure with the com- pressed irritation which saved that feeling in the Englishman's way from being too obvious.^ " This is a bad business, Miss Howe." "I've just come over— I haven't heard. Who is it?" "It's my cousin, poor chap— Arnold, the padre. He's been badly knifed in the bazar." The news passed over lier and left her lookinj^ with a curious face at chance. It was lifted a little, with composed lips, and eyes which refused to be taken by surprise. There was inquiry in them, also a defence. Chance, looking back, saw an invincible silent readiness, and a pallor which might be that of any vyoman. But the doctor was also looking, so she said, " That is very sad," and moved near enough to the wall to put her hand against it. She was not faint, but the wall was a fact on which one could, for the moment, rely. "They've got the man — one of those Cabuli money-lenders. The police had no trouble with him. He said it was the order of Allah— the brute ! Stray case of fanaticism, I suppose. It seems Arnold 301 302 THE PATH OF A STAR ' was walking al(;ng as usual, without a notion, and the fellow sprang on him, and in two seconds the thing was done. ' Hadn't a chance, poor beggar." "Where is it?" " Root of the left lung. About five inches deep. The artery pretty well cut through, I fancy." "Then " " Oh no — we can't do anything. The hccmorrhage must be tremendous. But he may live through the night. Are you going to Sister iMargaret ? " His nod took it for granted, and he went on. Hilda walked slowly forward, her head bent, with absorbed uncertain steps. A bar of evening sunlight came before her, she looked up and stepped outside the open door. She was handling this tiling that had happened, taking possession of it. It lay in her mind in the midst of a suddenly stricken and tenderly saddened consciousness. It lay there passively ; it did not rise and grapple with her, it was a thing that had happened — in Burra Bazar. The pity of it assailed her. Tears came into her eyes, and an infinite grieved solicitude gathered about her heart. " So? " she said to herself, thinking that he was young and loved his work, and that now his hand would be stayed from the use it had found. One of the ugly outrages of life, leaving nothing on the mouth but that brief acceptance. It came to hers with a note of the profound and of the supreme. She turned resolutely from searching her heart for any wild despair. She would not for an instant consider what she ought to feel. " So," she said, and pressed her lips till they stopped trembling, and went into the hospital. She asked a question or two, in search of Sister Margaret and the new case. It was "located," an assistant surgeon told her, in Private Ward Number i; 1 ind the c thing 5 deep. )rrhage igh the ;nt on. it, with unli^ht outside ig that 7 in her 2ndcrly ^ely ; it ng that y of it md an r heart. 3 young ould be he ugly Lith but a note turned y wild sr what Bed her tito the f Sister ed," an dumber THE PATH OF A STAR io>^ Two. She went more and more slowly toward Private Ward Number Two. The door was open ; she stood in it for an instant with eyes nerved to receive the tragedy. The room seemed curiously empty of any such thing, a door opposite was also open, with an arched verandah outside ; the low sun streamed through this upon the floor with its usual tranquillity. Bejond the arches, netted to keep the crows away, it made pictures with the tops of the trees. There was the small iron bed with the confused outline under the bedclothes, very quiet, and the Sister — the whitewashed wall rose sharp behind her black draperies — sitting with a book in her hands. Some scraps of lint on the floor beside the bed, and hardly anything else except the silence which had almost a presence, and a faint smell of carbolic ncid, and a certain feeling of impotence and abandonment and waiting which seemed to be in the air. Arnold moved on the pillow and saw her standing in the door. The bars of the bed's foot were in the way, he tried to lift his head to surmount the obstruction, and the Sister perceived her too. " I think absolutely still was our order, wasn't it, Mr. Arnold?" she said, with her little pink smile. "And Pm afraid Miss Howe isn't in time to be of much use to us, is she?" It was the bedside pleasantry that expected no reply, that indeed forbade one. " I'm sorry," Hilda said. As she moved into the room she detached her eyes from Arnold's, feeling as she did so that it was like tearing something. "There was so little to do," Sister Margaret said ; " Surgeon-Major Wills saw at once where the miscliicf lay. Nothing disagreeable was necessary, was it, Mr. Arnold? Perfect quiet, perfect rest — that's an ca-y 304 THE PATH OF A STAR prescription to take." She had rather prominent very l)Uie eyes, and an aquiline nose, and a small firm mouth, and her pink cheeks were beginning to be a little pendulous with age. Hilda gazed at her silently, noting about her authority and her flowing draperies something classical. Was she like one of the Fates? She approached the bed to do something to the pillow — Hilda had an impulse to push her away with the cry, " It is not time yet — Atropos ! " " I must go now for an hour or so," the Sister went on. " That poor creature in Number Six needs me ; they daren't give her any more morphia. You don't need it — happy boy ! " she said to Stephen, and at the look he sent her for answer she turned rather quickly to the door. Dear Sister, she was none of the Fates, she was obliged to give directions to Hilda standing in the door with her back turned. Happily for a deserved reputation for self-command they were few. It was chief and absolute that no one should be admitted. A bulletin had been put up at the hospital door for the information of inquiries ; later on when the doctor came again there would be another. She went away and they were left alone. The sun on the floor had vanished ; a yellowness stood in its place with a grey background, the background gaining, coming on. Always his eyes were upon her, she had given hers back to him and he seemed satisfied. She moved closer to the bed and stood beside him. Since there was nothing to do there was nothing to say. Stephen put out his hand and touched a fold of her dress. The room filled itself with something that had not been there before, his impotent love. Hilda knelt down beside the bed and pressed her forehead against the hand upon the covering, the hand that had so little more to do. Then Arnold spoke. me; THE PATH OF A STAR 305 " You dear wcMTian ! " he said. " You dear woman ! " She kept her head bowed like that and did not answer. It was his happiest moment. One mi^ht say he had Hved for this. Her tears fell upon his hand, a kind of baptism for his heart. He spoke again. " We must bear this," he panted. " It is— less cruel — than it seems. You don't know how much it is for the best." She lifted her wet face. "You mustn't talk," she faltered. "What difference " he did not finish the sen- tence. His words were too few to waste. He paused and made another effort. "If this had not happened I would have been — counted — among the unfaithful," he said. " I know now. I would have abandoned — my post. And gladly — without a regret — fur you." "Ah!" Hilda cried, with a vivid note of pain. " Would you ? I am sorry for that ! I am sorry ! " She gazed with a face of real tragedy at the form of her captive delivered to her in the bonds of death. A fresh pang visited her with the thought that in the mystery of the ordering of things she might have had to do with the forging of those shackles— the price of the year that had been very valuable. "My God is a jealous God," Arnold said. "He has delivered me — into His own hands — for the honour of His name. I acknowledge — I am content." " No, indeed no ! It was a wicked, horrible chance ! Don't charge your God with it." His smile was very sweet, but it paid the least possible attention. "You did love me," he said. He spoke as if he were already dead. " I did indeed," Hilda replied, and bent her shamed head upon her hands again in the confession. It is 20 306 THE PATH OF A STAR not strange that he heard only the affirmation in it. He stroked her hair. " It is good to know that," he said, "very good. I should have n-iarried you." He went on with sudden boldness and a new note of strength in his voice, " Think of that ! You would have been mine — to protect and work for. We should have gone together to England — where I could easily have got a curacy — easily." Hilda looked up. " Would you like to marry me now?" she asked eagerly, but he shook his head. ^ •' You don't understand," he said. " It is the dear sin God has turned my back upon." Then it came to her that he had asked for no caress. He was going unassoiled to his God, with the divine -iiiTerence of the dying. Only his iinaj^ination looked backward and forward. And she thought, " It is a little light flame that I have lit with my own taper th»t has gone out — that has gone out— and presently the grave will extinguish that." She sat quiet and sombre in the growing darkness, and presently Arnold slept. He slept through the bringing of a lamp, the arrival of flowers, subdued knocks of inquirers who would not be stayed by the bulletin— the visit of Surgeon- Major Wills, who felt his pulse without wakening him. " Holding out wonderfully," the doctor said. " Don't rouse him for the soup. He'll go out in about six hours without any pain. May not w^ake at all." The door opened again to admit the probationer come to relieve Miss Howe. Hilda beckoned her into the corridor. " You can go back," she said, " I will take your turn." "But the Mother Superior — you know how par- ticular about the rules " THE PATH OF A STAR 307 "Say nothing about it. Go to bed. I am not • , ^ » par- coming. " Then, Miss Howe, I shall be obliged to report it." " Report and be — report if you like. There is nothing for you to do here to-night," and Hilda softly closed the door. There was a whispered expostula- tion when Sister Margaret came back, but Miss Howe said, "It is arranged," and with a little silent nod of appreciation the Sister settled into her chair, her finger marking a place in the Church Service. Hilda sat nearer to the bed, her elbow on the table, shading her eyes from the lamp, and watched. " Is it not odd," whispered Sister Margaret, as the niijht wore on, "he has refused to be confessed before he goes ? He will not see the Brother Superior — or any of them. Strange, is it not?" Together they watched the quick short breathing. It seemed strangely impossible to sleep against such odds. They saw the lines of the face grow sharper and whiter, the dark eye-sockets sink to a curious roundness, a greyness gather about the mouth. There were times when they looked at each other in the last surmise. Yet the feeble pulse persisted — persisted. " I believe now," said Sister Margaret, " that he may go on like this until the morning. I am going to take half an hour's nap. Rouse me at once if he wakes," and she took an attitude of casual repose, turning the Prayer-book open on her knee for readier use, open at " Prayers for the D\'ing." The jackals had wailed themselves out, and there was a long, dark period when nothing but the sudden cry of a night bird in the hospital garden came between Hilda and the very vivid perception she had at that hour of the value and significance of the earthly lot. She lifted her head and listened to 3o8 THE PATH OF A STAR that, it seemed a comment. Suddenly, then, a harsh quarrelling of dogs — Christian dogs — arose in the distance and died away, and again there was night and silence. Night for hours. Time for reflection, alone with death and the lamp, upon the year that had been very valuable. " I would have married you," she whispered. " Yes, I would." Later her lips moved again. ** I would have taken the consequence ; " and again, " I would have paid any penalty." There he lay, a burden that she would never bear, a burden that would be gone in the morning. There were moments when she cried out on Fate for doing her this kindness. The long singing drone of a steamer's signal came across the city from the river, once, twice, thrice ; and presently the sparrows began their twittering in the bushes near the verandah, an unexpected unanimous bird talk that died as suddenly and as irrelevantly away. A conservancy cart lumbered past creaking ; the far shrill whistle of an awakening factory cut the air from Howrah; the first solitary foot smote through the dawn upon the pavement. The light showed grey beyond the scanty curtains. A noise of something being moved reverberated in the hospital below, and Arnold opened his eyes. They made him in a manner himself again, and he fixed them upon Hilda as if they could never alter. She leaned nearer him and made a sign of inquiry toward the sleeping Sister, with the farewells, the commenda- tions of poor mortality speeding itself forth, lying upon her lap. Arnold comprehended, and she was amazed to see the mask of his face charge itself with a faint smile as he shook his head. He made a little movement; she saw what he wanted and took his hand in hers. The smile was still in his eyes as he looked at her, and then at the cheated Sister. " J I I THE PATH OF A STAR 309 would have married you," she whispered passionately as if that could stay him. " Yes, I would." So in the end he trusted the new wings of his mortal love to bear his soul to its immortality. They carried their burden buoyantly, it was such a little way. The lamp was still holding its own against the paleness from the windows when the meaning finally went out of his clasp of Hilda's hand, without a struggle to stay, and she saw that in an instant when she was not looking, he had closed his eyes upon the world. She sat on beside him for a long time after that watchmg tenderly, and would not withdraw her hand— it seemed an abandonment. Three hours later Miss Howe, passing out of the hospital gate, was overtaken by Duff Lindsay, riding with a look of singular animation and vigour. He Hung himself off his horse to speak to her, and as he approached he drew from his inner coat pocket the brown envelope of a telegram. "Good-morning," he sai.l. "You do look fagged. 1 have a— curious— piece of news." •• Alicia told me that you were starting early this mornmg for Madras ! " o ^ " I should have been, but for this." ^'' Read it to me," Hilda said, " I'm tired." " Oh, do you very much mind ? I would rather " She took the missive ; it was dated the day before. Colombo, and read— -Do not expect me was married this morning to Colonel Markin S A we may not be unequally yoked l^^^i^^'^» "^'^^ unbelievers glory be to God Laura Markin She raised her eyes to his with the gravest, saddest irony. T^' II' ,1 310 THE PATH OF A STAR " Then you — you also are delivered," she said ; but he said " What ? " without special heed ; and I doubt whether he ever took the trouble to understand her reference to their joint indebtedness. " One hopes he isn't a brute," Lindsay went on with most impersonal solicitude, " and can support her. 1 suppose there isn't any way one could do anything for her. I heard a story only yesterday about a girl changing her mind on the way out. By Jove, I didn't suppose it would happen to me ! " " If you arc hurt anywhere," Hilda said absently, *' it is only your vanity, I fancy." " Ah, my vanity is very sore !" He paused for an instant, wondering to find so little expansion in her. " I came to ask after Arnold," he said. ** How is he?" " He is dead. He died at half-past five this morning." She left him with even less than her usual circum- stance, and turned in at the gate of the Baker Institution. It happened to be the last day of her probation. There has never been any difficulty in explaining Lindsay's marriage with Alicia Livingstone even to himself; the reasons for it, indeed, were so many and so obvious that he wondered often why they had not struck him earlier. But it is worth noting, perhaps, that the immediate precipitating cause arose in one evening service at the Cathedral, where it had its birth in the very individual charm of the nape of Alicia's neck, as she knelt upon her hassock in the fitting and graceful act of the responses. His instincts in these matters seem to have had a generous range, considering the tenets he was born to, but it was to him then a delightful reflection, THE PATH OF A STAR 311 often since repeated, that in the sheltered garden of delicate perfumes where this sweet person took her spiritual pleasure there was no rank vegetation. It is much to Miss Hilda Howe's credit that amid the distractions of her most successful London season she never quite abandons these two to the social joys that circle round the Ochterlony Monument and the arid scenic consolations of the Maidan. Her own experience there is one of the things, I fancy, that make her fond of saying that the stage is the merest cardboard presentation, and that one day she means to leave it, to coax back to her bosom the life which is her heritage in the wider, simpler ways of the world. She never mentions that experience more directly or less ardently. But I fear the promise I have quoted is one that she makes too often. THE END ^^. . _v-