Stella had always known that it would come; she had spent two months
far-seeing it. It had usually taken the form of a telegram falling out
of Mrs. Waring's wool, or Eurydice standing upon the steps,
Cassandra-like, to greet her with a message from Marian. Marian would
come to give her the message, but she wouldn't wait; she would drive
swiftly away in a motor, and leave the broken universe behind her. But
disasters do not come as we have planned their coming.
It was a dull November day, the streets were full of dying leaves, and
at the end of all the cross-roads surrounding the town hall a blue mist
hung like a curtain. Marian, in black velvet and furs, with old Spanish
ear-rings gleaming from her shell-like ears, stood in disgust upon the
steps of the town hall. Her small face was frozen with unexpected pain,
but she could still feel annoyed with the porter. She stood in the
thronged corridor and asked decisively for Miss Waring.
The porter told her that Miss Waring worked in No. 7, or, at any rate,
No. 7 would know where she was working.
Marian stared slightly over the porter's head.
"My good man," she said, "how am I to know where No. 7 is? Go and tell
her to come to me. Here is my card."
All the way to No. 7 the porter concocted brilliant retorts to this
order. He would tell her he was not a footman and that this wasn't
Buckingham Palace. He would say roughly that, if she had eyes in her
head, she could find No. 7 for herself. But he was intimidated by
Marian's ear-rings. A secret fear that she might turn out to be the lord
mayor's daughter drove him to No. 7.
Stella was filing letters when he knocked, and when he saw the card she
knew the messenger had come; but she did not forget to say as usual,
"Oh, thank you, Humphreys."
She finished filing the letters before she looked for Mr. Travers.
He was coming out of the council chamber at the top of a flight of
stairs. She stood there for a moment, holding him with her eyes, her
lips parted. She looked like a bird that has been caught in a room and
despairs of finding the way out.
Her face was strained and eager, and her sensitive eyebrows were drawn
together in a little tortured frown; but she spoke quietly as soon as
her breath came back to her.
"Mr. Travers, a friend of mine is in trouble. May I go to her for the
afternoon? There is still a great deal to do,--I know I ought not to ask
you to let me go,--but Mr. Belk and Miss Flint are so kind that I am
sure they would help me. I--I should be very grateful if you could spare
me."
"Certainly not," said Mr. Travers, sharply. "I mean, of course, you can
go; but I won't have Mr. Belk or Miss Flint near me. I will do the work
myself."
"Oh," she cried, aghast at this magnanimous humility on the part of her
employer, "please don't! Do let me ask them! I'd so much rather--"
Mr. Travers waved her away. He wanted to do the work himself, and he
wanted her to be aghast. He descended the stairs rapidly beside her.
"You may leave immediately, Miss Waring," he said sternly as they
reached No. 7; "and I will make my own arrangements about your work."
Stella fled. Again he felt the sense of wings, as if he had opened a
window, and a bird had flown past him into liberty.
He did not want her to be grateful, but he thought she might have looked
back. She had noticed him only as a barrier unexpectedly fallen. She had
not seen how strange it was that a barrier of so stubborn and erect a
nature as Mr. Travers should have consented to fall.
If any one else had asked him for an afternoon with a friend in trouble,
Mr. Travers knew that he would have said, "Your friends' troubles must
take place outside office-hours." But when he had seen Stella's face he
had forgotten office-hours.
Marian was sitting on a chair in the corridor. Her expression implied
that there was no such thing as a town hall, and that the chair was a
mere concession to unnecessary space. She said, as she saw Stella:
"Please be quick about putting your things on. Yes, it's bad news about
Julian."
Stella was quick. Marian said no more until they were seated together in
the motor; then she gave Stella a letter she had received from Lady
Verny. Lady Verny wrote:
My dear Marian: You must prepare yourself for a great distress.
Julian is in England, but he is very much injured. I want you to go
to him at once. Whenever he is conscious he asks for you. My dear,
if he recovers,--and they think that if he has an incentive to live
he will live,--he will be partially paralyzed. I know that he will
want to free you, and it will be right that you should even now
feel free; but till then--for a month--will you give him all you
can? All he needs to live? It is a great deal to ask of you, but I
think you are good and kind, and that I shall not ask this of you
in vain. His life is valuable, and will still be so, for his brain
is not affected. Before he relapsed into unconsciousness he was
able to give the Government the information he acquired. I think it
is not wrong to help him to live; but of course I am his mother,
and it is difficult for me to judge. All this is very terrible for
you, even the deciding of whether you ought to help him to live or
not. If I might suggest anything to you, it would be to talk about
it with that friend of yours, Miss Waring.
Come to me when you have seen him. Do not think, whatever your
decision is, that I shall not realize what it costs you, or fail
to do all in my power to help you to carry it out.
Yours affectionately,
HELEN VERNY.
Stella dropped the letter and looked at Marian. Marian sat erect, and
her eyes burned. She was tearless and outraged by sorrow. There are
people who take joy as a personal virtue and sorrow as a personal
insult, and Marian was one of these people. Happiness had softened and
uplifted her; pain struck her down and humiliated her solid sense of
pride.
"Why wasn't he killed?" she asked bitterly, meeting Stella's questioning
eyes. "I could have borne his being killed. Value! What does Lady Verny
mean by value? His career is smashed; his life is to all intents and
purposes over. And mine with it! It is very kind of her to say he will
release me. I do not need his mother to tell me that. She seems to have
overlooked the fact that I have given him my word! Is it likely that I
should fail him or that I could consent to be released? I do not need
any one to tell me my duty. But I hate life! I _hate_ it! I think it all
stupid, vile, senseless! Why did I ever meet him? What good has love
been to me? A few hours' happiness, and then this martyrdom set like a
trap to catch us! And I don't like invalids. I have never seen any one
very ill. I sha'n't know what to say to him."
"Oh, yes, you will, when you see him," said Stella; it was all that for
a while she could say.
She had always believed that Marian had a deep, but close-locked,
nature. Love presumably would be the key.
It was unlocked now. Pain had unlocked it, instead of love, and Stella
shivered at the tearless hardness, the sharp, shallow sense of personal
privation that occupied Marian's heart. She had not yet thought of
Julian.
Stella told herself that Marian's was only the blindness of the
unimaginative. The moment Marian saw Julian it would pass, and yield
before the directer illumination of the heart. Marian's nature was
perhaps one of those that yields very slowly to pain. When she saw
Julian she would forget everything else. She would not think of her
losses and sacrifices any more, or her duties. Stella felt curiously
stung and wasted by Marian's use of the word "duty." Was that all there
was for the woman whom Julian loved? Was that all there was for Julian!
But she could deal only with what Marian had; so, when she spoke again,
Stella said all she could to comfort Marian. She spoke of Julian's
courage; she said no life in Julian could be useless that left his brain
free to act. She suggested that he would find a new career for himself,
and she pictured his future successes. Beneath her lips and her quick
outer mind she thought only of Julian, broken.
They stopped in a large, quiet square, at the door of a private
hospital. There was no sound but the half-notes of birds stirring at
twilight in the small square garden, and far off the muffled murmur of
distant streets.
A nurse opened the door.
"You are Miss Young?" she said to Marian. "Yes, of course, we were
expecting you. Sister would like to see you first."
They stood for a moment in a small neat office. The sister rose from an
old Dutch bureau, one of the traces of the house's former occupants, and
held out her hand to Marian. Her eyes rested with intentness upon the
girl's face.
"Sir Julian is almost certain to know you," she said gently, "but you
mustn't talk much to him. He has been much weakened by exposure. He lay
in a wood for three days without food or water. There is every hope of
his partial recovery, Miss Young; but he needs rest and reassurance. We
can give him the rest here, but we must look to you to help us to bring
back to him the love of life."
Marian stood with her beautiful head raised proudly. She waited for a
moment to control her voice; then she asked quietly:
"Is the paralysis likely to be permanent?"
The sister moved a chair toward her, but Marian shook her head.
"It is a state of partial paralysis. He will be able to get about on
crutches," the sister replied. "Won't you rest for a few moments before
going up to him, Miss Young?"
"No, thank you," said Marian; "I will go up to him at once."
She turned quickly toward the door, and meeting Stella's eyes, she took
and held her arm tightly for a moment, and then, loosing it, walked
quickly toward the stairs. Stella followed her as if she had no being.
She had lost all consciousness of herself. She was a thought that clung
to Julian, an unbodied idea fixed upon the cross of Julian's pain. She
did not see the staircase up which she passed; she walked through the
wood in which Julian had lain three days.
He was in a large, airy room with two other men. Stella did not know
which was Julian until he opened his eyes. There was no color in his
face, and very little substance. The other men were raised in bed and
looked alive, but Julian lay like something made of wax and run into a
mold. Only his eyes lived--lived and flickered, and held on to his
drifting consciousness.
The nurse guided Marian to his bed, and, drawing a chair forward, placed
it close to him. Marian leaned down and kissed his forehead. She had
determined to do that, whatever he looked like; and she did it.
His lips moved. She bent down, and a whisper reached her: "I said I'd
come back to you, and I have." Then he closed his eyes. He had nothing
further to say.
Marian did not cry. After the first moment she did not look at Julian;
she looked away from him out of the window. She did not feel that it was
Julian who lay there like a broken toy. It was her duty. She had
submitted to it; but nothing in her responded to this submission except
her iron will.
The nurse had forgotten to bring a chair for Stella. She leaned against
the door until a red-haired boy with a bandaged arm, on the bed nearest
to her, exclaimed earnestly:
"Do take my chair! You look awfully done."
She was able to take his chair because her hands were less blind than
any other part of her, and she smiled at him because she had the habit
of smiling when she thanked people. Then her eyes went back to Julian.
Her heart had never left him; and she knew now that it never would leave
him again.
She did not know how long or short it was before Marian rose gracefully,
and said in her clear, sweet voice, "I shall come again to-morrow,
Julian."
Marian stopped at each of the other bedsides before she joined Stella.
She said little, friendly, inclusive words to the other two men, which
made them feel as if they would like to sweep the floor under her feet.
"All the same," the red-haired man explained after the door closed, "it
was the untidy little one, piled up against the door, that minded most.
I dare say she was his sister."
He had no need to lower his voice, though he did lower it, for fear of
its reaching Julian.
Julian had been reassured, and now he was resting. Consciousness had
altogether receded from him, perhaps that it might give him a better
chance of resting.