I reflected I would like to do it. I could imagine the stare, the squawk, the rustling furbelows, as madam fled from this grave madman. She would probably have me arrested.
You see I had come to think differently of Stella. At times I remembered her childish vanity, her childish, morbid views, her childish gusts of petulance and anger and mirth; and I smiled—oh, very tenderly, yet I smiled.
Then would awake the memory of Stella and myself in that ancient moonlight and of our first talk of death—two infants peering into infinity, somewhat afraid, and puzzled; of Stella making tea in the firelight, and prattling of her heart’s secrets, half-seriously, half in fun; and of Stella striving to lift a very worthless man to a higher level and succeeding—yes, for the time, succeeding; and of Stella dying with a light heart, elate with dreams of Peter Blagden’s future and of “a life that counted”; and of what she told me at the very last. And, irrationally perhaps, there would seem to be a sequence in it all, and I could not smile over it, not even tenderly.
And I would depicture her, a foiled and wistful little wraith, very lonely in eternity, and a bit regretful of the world she loved and of its blundering men, and unhappy—for she could never be entirely happy without Peter—and I feared, indignant. For Stella desired very heartily to be remembered—she was vain, you know—and they have all forgotten. Yes, I am sure that even as a wraith, Stella would be indignant, for she had a fine sense of her own merits.
“But I am just a little butterfly-woman,” she would say, sadly; then, with a quick smile, “Aren’t I?” And her eyes would be like stars—like big, blue stars—and afterward her teeth would glint of a sudden, and innumerable dimples would come into being, and I would know she was never meant to be taken seriously. …
But we must avoid all sickly sentiment.
You see the world had advanced since Stella died—twice around the sun, from solstice to solstice, from spring to winter and back again, travelling through I forget how many millions of miles; and there had been wars and scandals and a host of debutantes and any number of dinners; and, after all, the world is for the living.
So we of Lichfield agreed unanimously that it was very sad, and spoke of her for a while, punctiliously, as “poor dear Stella”; and the next week Emily Van Orden ran away with Tom Whately; and a few days later Alicia Wade’s husband died, and we debated whether Teddy Anstrother would do the proper thing or sensibly marry Celia Reindan: and so, a little by a little, we forgot our poor, dear Stella in precisely the decorous graduations of regret with which our poor dear Stella would have forgotten any one of us.
Yes, even those who loved her most deeply have forgotten Stella. They remember only an imaginary being who was entirely perfect, and of whom they were not worthy. It is this fictitious woman who has usurped the real Stella’s place in the heart of the real Stella’s own mother, and whom even Lizzie d’Arlanges believes to have been once her sister, and over whom Peter Blagden is always ready to grow maudlin; and it is this immaculate woman—who never existed—that will be until the end of Avis’ matrimonial existence the standard by which Avis is measured and found wanting. And thus again the whirligig of time, by an odd turn, brings in his revenges.
And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. And the woman they speak of today, in that hushed, hateful, sanctimonious voice, I must confess I never knew. And of all persons I chiefly rage against that faultless angel, that “poor dear Stella,” who has pilfered even the paltry tribute of being remembered from the Stella that today is mine alone. For it is to this fictitious person that the people whom my Stella loved, as she did not love me, now bring their flowers; and it was to this person they erected their pompous monument—nay, more, it was for this atrocious woman they ordered the very coffin in which my Stella lay when I last saw her. And it is not fair.
And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. It would be good to have her back—to have her back to jeer at me, to make me feel red and uncomfortable and ridiculous, to say rude things about my waist, and indeed to fluster me just by being there. Yes, it would be good. But, upon the whole, I am not sorry that Stella is gone.
For there is Peter Blagden to be considered. We can all agree today that Peter is a good fellow, that he is making the most of his Uncle Larry’s money, and that he is nobody’s enemy but
