Darling:
Do come Sunday to tea. Mama is out of town, and I must have some
support. Julian is going to bring his mother to see me for the
first time. I believe she's rather alarming--awfully blue and
booky; just your sort. I haven't had time to tell you anything.
It's so jolly being engaged; but it takes up all one's spare
moments. I didn't mean to marry Julian; he swept me off my feet. I
suppose I must be awfully in love with him. You know what explorers
are. They go away for years and leave you to entertain alone, and
then people say you don't get on; and of course exploring never
pays. He has a little place in the country and about £2000 a year.
It's awfully little, really, but it's wonderful what you can put up
with when you really care for a man; besides, he's sure to get on.
Don't fail me Sunday. I shall really be rather nervous. Old ladies
never have been my forte. Julian is such a dear! You're sure to
like him. He wants to meet you awfully, but he doesn't think women
ought to work. He is full of chivalry, and has charming manners. It
doesn't in the least matter what you wear. Heaps of love.
MARIAN.
It was this last reflection that gave Stella courage to ring the bell.
She had never been in the Youngs' house before. She had vaguely known
that it was in a very quiet square, with a garden in the middle, quite
near everything that mattered, and quite far away from everything that
didn't. It was the kind of house that looks as if no one was in it
unless they were giving a party. The interior was high, narrow, and
box-like. A great deal of money had been unpretentiously spent on it,
with a certain amount of good-humored, ordinary taste.
The drawing-room ran the whole length of the house, and was pink and
gray, because the Youngs knew that pink and gray go well together, just
as blue and gold do, only that blue fades.
The chairs were very comfortable, the little tables had the right kind
of ornaments, the pictures were a harmless, unenlightening addition to
the gray-satin walls.
The books that lay about were novels. They were often a little improper,
but never seriously so, and they always ended in people getting what
they wanted legally.
It was a clean, comfortable, fresh room and nothing was ever out of
place in it.
Marian was sitting under a high vase of pink canterbury-bells; by some
happy chance her dress was the same pale pink as the bells. She looked,
with her hands in her lap, her throat lifted, and the sun on her hair,
like a flower of the same family. Her manner was a charming mixture of
ease and diffidence.
Stella was late, and Lady Verny and Julian had arrived before her.
Lady Verny was like her son. She was very tall and graceful, and carried
herself as if she had never had to stoop. Her eyes had the steady,
frosty blueness of Julian's, with lightly chiseled edges; her lips were
ironic, curved, and a little thin.
She had piles of white hair drawn back over her forehead. When Marian
introduced her to Stella, she rose and turned away from the tea-table.
"I hope you will come and talk to me a little," she said in a clear,
musical voice. "We can leave Julian and Marian to themselves."
Lady Verny leaned back in the chair she had chosen for herself and
regarded Stella with steady, imperturbable eyes. It struck Stella as a
little alarming that they should all know where they wanted to sit, and
with whom they wanted to talk, without any indecision. She thought that
chairs would walk across the room to Lady Verny if she looked at them,
and kettles boil the moment Julian thought that it was time for tea. But
though she was even more frightened at this calm, unconscious competency
than she had expected to be, she saw it didn't matter about her clothes.
She knew they were all wrong, as cheap clothes always are, particularly
cheap clothes that you've been in a hurry over and not clever enough to
match. Her boots and her gloves weren't good, and her hat was horrid and
probably on the back of her head. Her blue-serge coat and skirt had
indefinite edges. But Stella was aware that Lady Verny, beautifully
dressed as she was, was taking no notice whatever of Stella's clothes.
They might make an extra point against her if she didn't like her.
Stella could hear her saying, "Funny that Marian should make friends
with a sloppy little scarecrow." But if she did like her, she would say
nothing about Stella's clothes. As far as the Vernys were concerned,
the appearances of things were always subsidiary.
"Engagements are such interrupted times," Lady Verny observed, with a
charming smile. "One likes to poke a little opportunity toward the poor
dears when one can."
"Yes," said Stella, eagerly, with her little, rapid flight of words.
"You're always running away when you're engaged, and never getting
there, aren't you? And then, of course, when you're married, you're
there, and can't run away. It's such a pity they can't be more mixed
up."
"Perhaps," said Lady Verny, still smiling. "But marriage is like a
delicate clock; it has to be wound up very carefully, and the less you
take its works to pieces afterward the better. Have you known Marian a
long time?"
"Three years," said Stella; "but when you say 'know,' I am only an
accident. I don't in any real sense belong to Marian's life; I belong
only to Marian. You see, I work." She thought she ought, in common
fairness to Lady Verny, not let her think that she was one of Marian's
real friends.
Lady Verny overlooked this implication.
"And what is your work, may I ask?" she inquired, with her grave, solid
politeness, which reminded Stella of nothing so much as a procession in
a cathedral.
"I was a secretary to Professor Paulson," Stella explained, "the great
naturalist. He was a perfect dear, too,--it wasn't only beetles and
things,--and when he died, I went into a town hall,--I've been there for
two years,--and that's more exciting than you can think. It isn't
theories and experiments, of course, but it's like being a part of the
hub of the universe. Rates and taxes, sanitary inspectors, old-age
pensions, and the health of babies run through my hands like water
through a sieve. You wouldn't believe how entertaining civic laws and
customs are--and such charming people! Of course I miss the other work,
too,--it was like having one's ear against nature,--but this is more
like having one's ear against life."
"I think you must have very catholic tastes," said Lady Verny, gently.
"My son knew Professor Paulson; it will interest him to know that you
worked for him. And Marian--did she take any interest in your scientific
experiences?"
Stella moved warily across this question; she had never spoken to Marian
about her work at all. Marian, as she knew, thought it all very
tiresome.
"You see," she explained, "they weren't my experiences; they were
Professor Paulson's. Marian couldn't very well be thrilled at third
hand; the thrill only got as far as me. Besides, half of what I do as a
secretary is confidential, and the other half sounds dull. Of course it
isn't really. I've been so lucky in that way. I've never had anything
dull to do."
"I can quite imagine that," said Lady Verny, kindly. "Dullness is in the
eye, not in the object. Does Marian like life better than intellect,
too?"
"Ah, Marian's life," said Stella, a little doubtfully, "is so
different!"
They glanced across at the distant tea-table. Julian was leaning toward
Marian with eyes that held her with the closeness of a frame to a
picture.
He was laughing at her a little, with the indulgent, delighted laughter
of a man very deeply in love. She was explaining something to him,
simply and gravely, without undue emphasis. Stella guessed that it was
one of the things Marian wanted, and she did not think that Julian could
get out of giving it to her by laughter.
"Marian's life hasn't got divisions in it like mine," she explained.
"She's just a beautiful human creature. She is equable and strong and
delightful and absolutely honest. She's as honest as crystal; but she
hasn't had to bother about choosing."
"Ah," said Lady Verny, "you think that, do you? But, my dear Miss
Waring, sooner or later we all have to bother about choosing. Beauty and
strength don't save us. Absolute honesty often lets us in, and
sometimes, when the scales weigh against us, we cease to be equable."
"But they won't, you see," Stella said eagerly. "They can't weigh
against her now, Lady Verny. Don't you see? There's your son--it's why
one's so delighted. An engagement to him is like some thumping
insurance which somehow or other prevents one's house being burned."
Lady Verny laughed.
"Let us hope your theory is a correct one," she said, rising from her
seat. "I am going to talk to her now, and you can talk to the insurance
company."
Stella gasped. She wanted to run away, to catch Lady Verny's graceful
scarf and tell her she couldn't really talk to anybody's son. Agreeable,
massive beings who explored continents and lived in clubs oughtn't to
come her way. But Julian crossed the room to her side with the quickness
of a military order. His manners hid his reluctance. He was at her
service in a moment. His keen eyes, harder than his mother's and more
metallic, met hers once and glanced easily away. They said nothing to
Stella except that he was a watchful human being who couldn't be taken
in, and was sometimes perhaps unduly aware that he couldn't be taken in.
"I'm very glad indeed," he said cordially, "to meet Marian's greatest
friend. You must tell me all about her. You see, I'm a new-comer; I've
known her only six weeks, and I've been so busy trying to impress her
with my point of view that I quite feel I may have overlooked some of
hers. Women always understand women, don't they?"
He wasn't going to be difficult to talk to. That unnecessary ingredient
in his composition saved Stella. As long as she had a brain to call to,
and wasn't only to be awed by splendor of appearance and forms as
difficult for her to cross as five-barred gates, she needn't be afraid
of him. It never was people that Stella was afraid of, but the things,
generally the silly things, that separated her from them.
"We do and we don't understand each other," she said swiftly. "I don't
think women can tell what another woman will do; but granted she's done
it, I dare say most could say why."
Julian laughed.
"Then have the kindness to inform me," he said, "why Marian has
consented to marry me. Incidentally, your reply will no doubt throw a
light for me upon her mental processes."
Stella saw he did not want any light thrown anywhere; he was simply
giving his mother time to get to know Marian. Then he was going back to
her; that was his light.
She gave a vague little smile at the sublimated concentration of lovers.
She liked to watch them; she would never have to be one.
It was like seeing some beautiful wild creature of the woods. It
wouldn't be like you at all, and yet it would be exceedingly amusing and
touching to watch, and sometimes it would make you think of what it
would feel like to be wild and in those woods.
She reminded herself sharply, as her eyes turned back to Julian, that it
wouldn't do to let him think she thought him wild. He was behaving very
well, and the least she could do was to let him think so. She gave
herself up to his question.
"You're very strong," she said consideringly. "Marian likes strength.
She's strong herself, you know; probably that's one of her reasons."
"Good," he said cheerfully. "Physically strong, d' you mean, or an iron
will? Iron wills are quite in my line, I assure you. Any other reason?"
"Strong both ways," said Stella; "and you're secure. I mean, what you've
taken you'll keep. I think some women like a man they can be sure of."
"Let us hope they all do," said Sir Julian, laughing. "It would imply a
very bad business instinct if they didn't."
"I do not think I agree with you," said Stella, firmly. "The best
business is often an adventure, a risk. Safe business does not go far;
it goes only as far as safety."
"Well, I'm not sure that I want women to go particularly far," said Sir
Julian. "I like 'em to be safe; let 'em leave the better business with
the risk in it to men. I shall be content if Marian does that."
"I think Marian will," said Stella. "But there are other things, of
course, besides you and Marian: there's life. You can only take all the
risk there is if you take all the life. I see what you would like, Sir
Julian: you want a figurehead guaranteed against collisions.
Unfortunately there's no guarantee against collisions even for a
figurehead. Besides, as I told you before, Marian's strong. Iron wills
don't make good figureheads."
"Ah, you're one of these new women," said Sir Julian, indulgently. "I
don't mind 'em a bit, you know, myself--all steel and ginger,--and quite
on to their jobs. I admit all that. But Marian ain't one of them. Her
strength is the other kind--the kind you get by sitting still, don't you
know; and if I may say so in passing, if I run a ship, I don't collide.
But let's have your third reason. I see you're keeping something back.
She's going to marry me because I'm strong and because I'm sure; I
approve of both of them, sound business reasons. Now, Miss Waring,
what's the third?"
"Ah, the third isn't a reason at all," said Stella; "but it's the only
one that I thoroughly agree with as a motive: she likes you for
yourself."
Sir Julian's eyes suddenly softened; they softened so much that they
looked quite different eyes, almost as if they belonged to a very
pleased little boy.
"Oh," he said, looking back at Marian. "I shouldn't in the least mind
being guaranteed that, you know."
Lady Verny rose and walked toward them.
"I have some other calls to make," she said to her son. "You'll stay, of
course."
Stella joined her as soon as she had given the happiest of her smiles
into Marian's expectant eyes. Lady Verny's face, as they stood together
outside the door, was perfectly expressionless.
Without a word she descended the stairs side by side with Stella. When
she reached the front door she held out her hand to Stella and smiled.
"I hope I shall meet you again some day," she said, with gracious
sincerity. "I enjoyed our little talk together very much."
She said nothing whatever about Marian.