"You have been back in England long?" asked Stella Croyle.
"A little while," said Hillyard evasively.
It was the first week of September. But since his return from Rackham Park to London his days had been passed in the examination of files of documents; and what little time he had enjoyed free from that labour had been given to quiet preparations for his departure.
"You might have come to see me," Stella Croyle suggested. "You knew that I wished to see you."
"Yes, but I have been very busy," he answered. "I am going away."
Stella Croyle looked at him curiously.
"You too! You have joined up?"
Hillyard shook his head.
"No good," he answered. "I told you my lungs were my weak point. I am turned down—and I am going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find oneself staying on in London, going to a little dinner party here and there where all the men are oldish, when all of one's friends have gone."
Stella Croyle's face and voice softened.
"Yes. I can understand that," she said.
Hillyard watched her narrowly, but there was no doubt that she was sincere. She had received him with an air of grievance, and a hard accent in her voice. But she was entering now into a comprehension of the regrets which must be troubling him.
"I am sorry," she continued. "I never cared very much for women. I have very few friends amongst them. And so I am losing—every one." She held out her hand to him in sympathy. "But if I were a man and had been turned down by the doctors, I don't think that I could stay. I should go like you and hide."
She smiled and poured out two cups of tea.
"That is a habit of yours, even though you are not a man," Hillyard replied.
"What do you mean?"
"You run away and hide."
Stella looked at her visitor in surprise.
"Who told you that?"
"Sir Charles Hardiman."
Stella Croyle was silent for a few moments.
"Yes, that's true," and she laughed suddenly. "When things go wrong, I become rather impossible. I have often made up my mind to live entirely in the country, but I never carry the plan out."
She let Hillyard drink his tea and light a cigarette before she approached the question which was torturing her.
"You had a good time in the Sudan!" she began. "Lots of heads?"
"Yes. I had a perfect time."
"And your friend? Captain Luttrell. Did you meet him?"
Hillyard had pondered on the answer which he would give to her when she asked that question. If he answered, "Yes,"—why, then he must go on, he must tell her something of what passed between Luttrell and himself, how he delivered his message and what answer he received. Let him wrap that answer up in words, however delicate and vague, she would see straight to the answer. Her heart would lead her there. To plead forgetfulness would be merely to acknowledge that he slighted her; and she would not believe him. So he lied.
"No. I never met Luttrell. He was away down in Khordofan when I was on the White Nile."
Stella Croyle had turned a little away from Hillyard when she put the question; and she sat now with her face averted for a long while. Nothing broke the silence but the ticking of the clock.
"I am sorry," said Hillyard.
No doubt her disappointment was bitter. She had counted very much, no doubt, on this chance of the two men meeting; on her message reaching her lover, and a "little word" now and again from him coming to her hands. Some morning she would wake up and find an envelope in the familiar writing waiting upon the tray beside her tea—that, no doubt, had been the hope which she had lived on this many a day. Hillyard was not fool enough to hold that he understood either the conclusions at which women arrived, or the emotions by which they jumped to them. But he attributed these hopes and thoughts with some confidence to Stella Croyle—until she turned and showed him her face. The sympathy and gentleness had gone from it. She was white with passion and her eyes blazed.
"Why do you lie to me?" she cried. "I met Harry this morning."
Hillyard was more startled by the news of Luttrell's presence in London than confused by the detection of his lie.
"Harry Luttrell!" he exclaimed. "You are sure? He is in England?"
"Yes. I met him in Piccadilly outside Jerningham's"—she mentioned the great outfitters and provision merchants—"he told me that he had run across you in the Sudan. What made you say that you hadn't?"
Hillyard was taken at a loss.
"Well?" she insisted.
Hillyard could see no escape except by the way of absolute frankness.
"Because I gave him your message, Mrs. Croyle," he replied slowly, "and I judged that he was not going to answer it."
Stella Croyle was inclined to think that the world was banded against her, to deceive her and to do her harm. They had all been engaged, Hardiman and the rest of them, in keeping Harry Luttrell away from her: in defending him, whether he wished it or not, from the wiles of the enchantress. Stella Croyle was quick enough in the up-take where her wounded heart was not concerned, but she was never very clear in any judgment which affected Harry Luttrell. Passion and disappointment and hope drew veils between the truth and her, and she dived below the plain reason to this or that far-fetched notion for the springs of his conduct. Almost she had persuaded herself that Harry Luttrell, by the powerful influence of friends, was being kept against his will from her side. Her anger against Hillyard had sprung, not from the mere fact that he had lied to her, but from her fancy that he had joined the imaginary band of her enemies. She understood now that in this she had been wrong.
"I see," she said gently. "It was to spare me pain?"
"Yes."
Suddenly Stella Croyle laughed—and with triumph. She showed to Hillyard a face from which all the anger had gone.
"You need not have been so anxious to spare me. Harry is coming here this afternoon."
She saw the incredulity flicker in Hillyard's eyes, but she did not mind.
"Yes," she asserted. "He goes down this evening to a camp in the New Forest where his battalion is waiting to go to France. He starts at six from Waterloo. He promised to run in here first."
Hillyard looked at the clock. It was already half-past four. He had not the faintest hope that Luttrell would come. Stella had no doubt pressed him to come. She had probably been a little importunate. Luttrell's promise was an excuse, just an excuse to be rid of her—nothing more.
"Luttrell has probably a great deal to do on this last afternoon," he suggested.
"Of course, he won't be able to stay long," Stella Croyle agreed. "Still, five minutes are worth a good deal, aren't they, if you have waited for them two years?"
She was impenetrable in her confidence. It clothed her about like armour. Not for a moment would she doubt—she dared not! Harry was coming back to the house that afternoon. Would he break something—some little china ornament upon the mantel-shelf? He generally knocked over something. What would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding head, or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she had picked up at Christie's the day before? Stella smiled delightedly as she selected this and that of her little treasures for destruction. Oh, to-day Harry Luttrell could sweep every glass or porcelain trinket she possessed into the grate—when once he had passed through the doorway—when once again he stood within her room. She sat with folded hands, hope like a rose in her heart, sure of him, so sure of him that she did not even watch the hands of her clock.
But the hands moved on.
"I will stay, if I may," said Hillyard uncomfortably. "I will go, of course, when——" and he could not bring himself to complete the sentence.
Stella, however, added the words, though in a quieter voice and with less triumph than she had used before.
"When he comes. Yes, do stay. I shall be glad."
Slowly the day drew in. The sunlight died away from the trees in the park. In the tiny garden great shadows fell. The dusk gathered and Hillyard and Stella Croyle sat without a word in the darkening room. But Stella had lost her pride of carriage. On the mantelpiece the clock struck the hour—six little tinkling silvery strokes. At that moment a guard was blowing his whistle on a platform of Waterloo and a train beginning slowly to move.
"He will have missed his train," said Stella in an unhappy whisper. "He will be here later."
"My dear," replied Hillyard, and leaning forward he took and gently shook her hand. "Soldiers don't miss their trains."
Stella did not answer. She sat on until the lamps were lit in the streets outside and in this room the dusk had changed to black night.
"No, he will not come," she said at last, in a low wail of anguish. She rose and turned to Hillyard. Her face glimmered against the darkness deathly white and her eyes shone with sorrow.
"It was kind and wise of you to wish to spare me," she said. "Oh, I can picture to myself how coldly he heard you. He never meant to come here this afternoon."
Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it. But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf now separated these two.
He had called at a nursing home close to Portland Place where a Colonel Oakley lay dying of a malignant disease. Oakley had been the chief spirit of reviving the moral and the confidence of the disgraced Clayfords. He had laboured unflinchingly to restore its discipline, to weld it into one mind, with dishonour to redeem, and a single arm to redeem it. He had lived for nothing else—until the internal trouble laid him aside. Luttrell called at half-past three to tell him that all was well with his old battalion, and was met by a nurse who shook her head.
"The last two days he has been lying, except for a minute here and there, in a coma. You may see him if you like, but it is a question of hours."
Luttrell went into the bedroom where the sick man lay, so thin of face and hand, so bloodless. But it seemed that the Fates wished to deal the Colonel one last ironic stroke, before they let him die. For, while Luttrell yet stood in the room, Colonel Oakley's eyes opened. This last moment of consciousness was his, the very last; and while it still endured, suddenly, down Portland Place, with its drums beating, its soldiers singing, marched a battalion. The song and the music swelled, the tramp of young, active, vigorous soldiers echoed and reached down the quiet street. Colonel Oakley turned his face to his pillow and burst into tears; the bitterness of death was given him to drink in overflowing measure. It seemed as though a jibe was flung at him.
The tramp of the battalion had not yet died away when Oakley sank again into unconsciousness.
"It was pretty rough that he should just wake up to hear that and to know that he would never have part in it, eh?" said Luttrell, speaking in a low voice more to himself than to the nurse. "What he did for us! Pretty hard treatment, eh?"
Luttrell left the home with one thought filling his mind—the regiment. It had got to justify all Oakley's devotion; it had got somehow to make amends to him, even if he never was to know of it, for this last unfair stroke of destiny. Luttrell walked across London, dwelling upon the qualities of individual men in the company which was his command—how this man was quick, and that man stupid, and that other inclined to swank, and a fourth had a gift for reading maps, and a fifth would make a real marksman; and so he woke up to find himself before the bookstall in the station at Waterloo. Then he remembered the visit he had promised, but there was no longer any time. He took the train to the New Forest, and three days later went to France.
But of Luttrell's visit to Colonel Oakley, Stella Croyle never knew. And, again, very likely it would not have mattered if she had. They were parted too widely for insight and clear vision.
*******
Hillyard carried away with him a picture of Stella's haunted and despairing face. It was over against him as he dined at his club, gleaming palely from out of darkness, the lips quivering, the eyes sad with all the sorrows of women. He could blame neither the one nor the other—neither Stella Croyle nor Harry Luttrell. One heart called to the other across too wide a gulf, and this heart on the hither side was listening to quite other voices and was deaf to her cry for help. But Hillyard was on the road along which Millicent Splay had already travelled. More and more he felt the case for compassion. He carried the picture of Stella's face home with him. It troubled his sleep; by constant gazing upon it he became afraid....
He waked with a start to hear a question whispered at his ear. "Where is she? How has she passed this night?" The morning light was glimmering between the curtains. The room was empty. Yet surely those words had been spoken, actually spoken by a human voice.... He took his telephone instrument in his hand and lifted the receiver. In a little while—but a while too long for his impatience—his call was acknowledged at the exchange. He gave Stella Croyle's number and waited. Whilst he waited he looked at his watch. The time was a quarter past seven.
An unfamiliar and sleepy voice answered him from her house.
"Will you put me on to Mrs. Croyle?" he requested, and the reply came back:
"Mrs. Croyle went away with her maid last night."
"Last night?" cried Hillyard incredulously. "But I did not leave the house myself until well after six, and she had then no plans for leaving."
Further details, however, were given to him. Mrs. Croyle had called up a garage whence cars can be hired. She had packed hurriedly. She had left at nine by motor.
"Where for?" asked Hillyard.
The name of an hotel in the pine country of Surrey was given.
"Thank you," said Hillyard, and he rang off.
She had run to earth in her usual way, when trouble and grief broke through her woman's armour and struck her down—that was all! Hillyard lighted a cigarette and rang for his tea. Yes, that was all! She was acting true to her type, as the jargon has it. But against his will, her face took shape before him, as he had seen it in the darkness of her room and ever since—ever since!
He rang again, and more insistently. He possessed a small, swift motor-car. Before the clocks of London had struck eight he was travelling westwards along the King's Road. Hillyard was afraid. He did not formulate his fears. He was not sure of what he feared. But he was afraid—terribly afraid; and for the first time anger rose up in his heart against his friend. Luttrell! Harry Luttrell! At this very moment he was changing direction in columns of fours upon the drill ground, happy in the smooth execution of the manoeuvre by his men and untroubled by any thought of the distress of Stella Croyle. Well, little things must give way to great—women to the exigencies of drill!
Meanwhile, Hillyard grew more afraid, and yet more afraid. He swept down the hill to Cobham, passed between the Hut and the lake, and was through Ripley before the shutters in the shops were down. The dew was heavy in the air; all the fresh, clean smell of the earth was in that September morning. And as yet the morning itself was only half awake. At last the Hog's Back rose, and at a little inn, known for its comfort—and its chef—Hillyard's car was stopped.
"Mrs. Croyle?" Hillyard asked at the office.
"Her maid is here," said the girl clerk, and pointed.
Hillyard turned to a girl, pretty and, by a few years, younger than Stella Croyle.
"I have orders not to wake Mrs. Croyle until she rings," said the maid. Jenny Prask, she was called, and she spoke with just a touch of pleasant Sussex drawl. "Mrs. Croyle has not been sleeping well, and she looked for a good night's rest in country air."
The maid was so healthful in her appearance, so reasonable in her argument, that Hillyard's terrors, fostered by solitude, began to lose their vivid colours.
"I understand that," he stammered. "Yet, Jenny——"
Jenny Prask smiled.
"You are Mr. Hillyard, I think?"
"Yes."
"I have heard my mistress speak of you." Hillyard knew enough of maids to understand that "mistress" was an unusual word with them. Here, it seemed, was a paragon of maids, who was quite content to be publicly Stella Croyle's maid, whose gentility suffered no offence by the recognition of a mistress.
"If you wish, I will wake her."
Jenny Prask went up the stairs, Hillyard at her heels. She knocked upon the door. No answer was returned. She opened it and entered.
Stella Croyle was up and dressed. She was sitting at a table by the window with some sheets of notepaper and some envelopes in front of her, and her back was towards Hillyard and the open door. But she was dressed as she had been dressed the evening before when he had left her; the curtains in the room were drawn, and the electric lights on the writing-table and the walls were still burning. The bed had not been slept in.
Stella Croyle rose and turned towards her visitors. She tottered a little as she stood up, and her eyes were dazed.
"Why have you come here?" she asked faintly, and she fell rather than sat again in her chair.
Hillyard sprang forward and tore the curtains aside so that the sunlight poured into the room, and Stella opened and shut her eyes with a contraction of pain.
"I had so many letters to write," she explained, "I thought that I would sit up and get through with them."
Hillyard looked at the table. There were great black dashes on the notepaper and lines, and here and there a scribbled picture of a face, and perhaps now and again half a word. She had sat at that table all night and had not even begun a letter. Hillyard's heart was torn with pity as he looked from her white, tired face to the sheets of notepaper. What misery and unhappiness did those broad, black dashes and idle lines express?
"You must have some breakfast," he said. "I'll order it and have it ready for you downstairs by the time you are ready. Then I'll take you back to London."
The blood suddenly mounted into her face.
"You will?" she cried wildly. "In a reserved compartment, so that I may do nothing rash and foolish? Are you going to be kind too?"
She broke into a peal of shrill and bitter laughter. Then her head went down upon her hands, and she gave herself up to such a passion of sobbing and tears as was quite beyond all Hillyard's experience. Yet he would rather hear those sobs and see her bowed shoulders shaking under the violence of them than listen again to the dreadful laughter which had gone before. He had not the knowledge which could enable him to understand her sudden outburst, nor did he acquire that knowledge until long afterwards. But he understood that quite unwittingly he had touched some painful chord in that wayward nature.
"I am going to take you back in my motor-car," he said. "I'll be downstairs with the breakfast ready."
She had probably eaten nothing, he reckoned, since teatime the day before. Food was the steadying thing she needed now. He went to the door which Jenny Prask held open for him.
"Don't leave her!" he breathed in a whisper.
Jenny Prask smiled.
"Not me, sir," she said fervently.
Hillyard remembered with comfort some words which she had spoken in appreciation of the loving devotion of her maid.
"In three-quarters of an hour," said Jenny; and later on that morning, with a great fear removed from his heart, Hillyard drove Stella Croyle back to London.