Stella found Lady Verny weeding. She drew the weeds up very gracefully
and thoroughly, with a little final shake.
It was a hard, shivering March morning. Next to the bed upon which Lady
Verny was working was a sheet of snowdrops under a dark yew-hedge. They
trembled and shook in the light air like a drift of wind-blown snow.
Stella hovered irresolutely above them; then she said:
"Lady Verny, I am afraid I must go back to the town hall next week. I
haven't been any use."
Lady Verny elaborately coaxed out a low-growing weed, and then, with a
vicious twist, threw it into the basket beside her.
"Why don't you go and talk to Julian?" she asked. "He can't be expected
to jump a five-barred gate if he doesn't know it's there."
Stella hesitated before she spoke; then she said with a little rush:
"What I feel now is that I'm not the person to tell him--to tell him
it's there, I mean. I don't know why I ever thought I was. The person to
tell him that would be some one he could notice like a light, not a
person who behaves like a candle caught in a draft whenever he speaks to
her."
"My dear," said Lady Verny, ruthlessly exposing, and one by one
exterminating, a family of wireworms, "I fear you have no feminine
sense. You have a great many other kinds,--of the mind, and no doubt of
the soul. You should try to please Julian. You don't; you leave him
alone, and in consequence he thinks he's a failure with you. Women with
the feminine sense please a man without appearing to make the effort.
The result is that the man thinks he's pleasing _them_, and a man who
thinks that he has succeeded in pleasing an agreeable woman is not
unaware of her."
"But I'm so afraid of him," pleaded Stella. "I don't believe you know
how frightening he is."
"Yes," said Lady Verny; "he has lost his inner security. That makes a
person very frightening, I know. He has become aggressive because he
feels that something he has always counted on as a weapon has been
withdrawn from him. It's like living on your wits; people who do that
are always hard. I think you can give him the weapon back; but to
succeed you must use all your own. You must go into a room as if it
belonged to you. It's astonishing how this place suits you; but you must
hold your head up, and lay claim to your kingdom."
"But I've never had a kingdom," objected Stella, "and I only want him to
be interested in the idea of writing a book."
"Well, that's what I mean," said Lady Verny, decently interring the
corpses of the worms. "At least it's part of what I mean. The only way
to get Julian to write a book just now is to charm him. Men whose nerves
and hearts are broken don't respond readily to the abstract. You can do
what I can't, because I'm his mother. He's made all the concessions he
could or ought to make to me. He promised not to take his life.
Sometimes in these last few months I've felt like giving him his
promise back. Now are you going to be afraid of trying to please
Julian?"
"O Lady Verny," Stella cried, "you make me hate myself! I'll do anything
in the world to please him; I'd play like a brass band, or cover myself
with bangles like Cleopatra I Don't, _don't_ think I'll ever be a coward
again!"
"You needn't go as far as the bangles," said Lady Verny, smiling grimly.
"Do it your own way, but don't be afraid to let Julian think you like
him. He finds all that kind of thing rather hard to believe just now.
"He's been frozen up. Remember, if he isn't nice to you, that thawing is
always rather a painful process. Now run along, and leave me in peace
with my worms."
It cannot be said that Stella ran, but she went. She passed through the
hall and down a passage; and wondered, if she had been an
early-Christian martyr about to step into the arena, whether she
wouldn't on the whole have preferred a tiger to Julian.
The door opened on a short passage at the end of which was an old oak
doorway heavily studded with nails. She knew this must be Julian's
room, because she heard Ostrog growling ominously from inside it. Julian
presumably threw something at him which hit him, for there was the sound
of a short snap, and then silence.
"Please come in," said Julian in a voice of controlled exasperation.
Stella stepped quickly into the room, closing the door behind her.
It was a long, wide room with a low ceiling. There were several polar
bear-skins on the floor, and a row of stuffed penguins on a shelf behind
Julian's chair. Three of the walls were covered with bookcases; the
fourth was bare except for an extraordinarily vivid French painting of a
girl seated in a café. She had red hair and a desperate, laughing face,
and was probably a little drunk. There was a famous artist's signature
beneath her figure, but Stella had a feeling that Julian had known the
girl and had not bought the picture for the sake of the signature.
Ostrog stood in front of her, growling, with every separate hair on his
back erect.
"Keep quite still for a moment," said Julian, quickly. "Ostrog, lie
down!" The dog very slowly settled himself on his haunches, with his
red, savage eyes still fixed on Stella. "Now I think you can pass him
safely," Julian added. "He has a peculiar dislike to human proximity,
especially in this room. You can't write him down as one who loves his
fellow-men, and I fear he carries his unsociability even further in
respect to his fellow-women."
"It must be nice for you," said Stella, "to have some one who expresses
for you what you are too polite to say for yourself."
Julian gave her a quick, challenging look.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "Why should you suppose any such thing?"
"I expect because it is true," said Stella, quietly. "Of course you
don't growl or show your teeth, and your eyes aren't red; but nobody
could suppose when you said 'Come in' just now that you wanted anybody
to come in."
"The chances were all in favor of its being somebody that I didn't
want," explained Julian, politely. "For once they misled me. I
apologize."
Stella smiled; her eyes held his for a moment. She did not contradict
him, but she let him see that she didn't believe him. "If he was ever
really sorry," she thought, "he wouldn't apologize. When he's polite,
it's because he isn't anything else."
"I came," she explained, "to ask you to lend me Professor Paulson's book
on reindeer-moss. Will you tell me where it is and let me get it for
myself, if Ostrog doesn't mind?"
To her surprise, Julian allowed her to find it for herself. Ostrog
continued to growl, but without immediate menace. When she had found it,
she took it across to Julian.
"Please don't run away," he said quickly, "unless you want to. Tell me
what you intend to look up about the moss. I had a little tussle with
Paulson over it once. He was an awfully able fellow, but he hadn't the
health to get at his facts at first hand. That was unfortunate;
second-hand accuracy leaks."
Stella sat down near him, and in a minute they were launched into an
eager discussion. She had typed the book herself, and had its facts at
her fingers'-end. She presented a dozen facets to her questions, with a
light on them from her dancing mind.
Julian differed, defended himself, and explained, till he found himself
at length in the middle of an account of his last expedition. He pulled
himself up abruptly.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "what a dark horse you are! Do tell me how you
come to know anything about such a subject. Did you smuggle yourself
into an Arctic expedition as a stowaway, or have you been prospecting
gold at Klondike with a six-shooter and a sleeping-sack? It's amazing
what you know about the North."
"It is not so uncanny as you think," said Stella, quietly. "I was
Professor Paulson's secretary. For five years I studied the fauna and
flora of arctic regions. I used to help him examine the tests brought
back by explorers. He taught me how to understand and check climate and
weather charts. All the collected specimens went through my hands. I did
the drawings for this book, for instance. You know, a secretary is a
kind of second fiddle. Give him a lead, and he catches up the music and
carries it through as thoroughly, though not so loudly, as the first
violin. I like being a second fiddle and I like the North."
"That's odd," said Julian, drawing his heavy eyebrows together. "I had
an idea I had met Professor Paulson's secretary before."
"You are quite right," said Stella; "you did meet her before."
Julian stared at her; his eyes hardened.
"Do you mean that it was you I met at Sir Francis Young's?" he asked
her. "You are Miss Young's great friend, then, are you not?"
Stella turned her eyes away from him. She hated to see him guarding
himself against her.
"I was her friend," she said in a low voice; "but I have not seen her or
heard from her for six months, nor have I written."
Sir Julian still looked at her, but the sternness of his eyes decreased.
She sat meekly beside him, with her drooping head, like the snowdrops
she had brought in with her from the March morning. She did not look
like a woman who could be set, or would set herself, to spy upon him. He
acquitted her of his worst suspicions, but his pride was up in arms
against her knowledge.
"It's too stupid for me," he said, "not to have recognized you
immediately; for I haven't in the least forgotten you or our talk. You
said some charming things, Miss Waring; but fate, a little unkindly, has
proved them not to be true."
Stella turned her eyes back to his. She no longer felt any fear of him.
She was too sorry for him to be afraid.
"No," she said eagerly, "I was perfectly right. I said you were strong.
Things have happened to you,--horrible things,--but you're there; you're
there as well as the things--in control of them. Why, look at what
you've been telling me--the story of your last expedition! It's so
fearfully exciting, and it's all, as you say, first-hand knowledge. You
brought back with you the fruits of experience. Why don't you select and
sort them and give them to the world?"
He looked at her questioningly.
"Do you mean these old arctic scraps?" he said slowly. "They might have
mattered once, but they're all ancient history now. The flood and the
fire have come on us since then. All that's as dead--as dead and useless
as a crippled man. Besides, no one can write a book unless it interests
him. I'm not even interested."
Stella's eyes fell; her breath came quickly.
"But don't you think," she said, "you could be made a little interested
again? You were interested, weren't you, when you were talking to me a
few minutes ago?"
Sir Julian laughed good-naturedly.
"I dare say I was interested talking to you," he said. "You're such a
changeling: you play chess like a wizard and know the North like a
witch. I'm afraid, Miss Waring, that interest in your conversation isn't
in itself sufficient to turn a man into an author."
Stella rose slowly to her feet. She opened her lips as if to speak to
Julian, but he was looking past her out of the window, with a little
bitter smile that took away her hopefulness. Ostrog escorted her,
growling less and less menacingly, to the door. Stella did not look back
at Julian, and she forgot to hold her head up as she went out of the
room. After she had gone Julian discovered that she had dropped two of
her snowdrops on the floor. He picked them up carefully and laid them on
his desk.
"A curious, interesting girl," he said to himself; "an incredible friend
for Marian to have had. I wonder what made my mother take her up?"