Lady Verny finished her weeding. It took her an hour and a half to do
what she wanted to the bed; then she rose from her cramped position, and
went into Julian's library by one of the French windows. She guessed
that Stella had failed.
Julian was lying on a long couch, with his hands behind the back of his
head and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Lady Verny knew that, when he
was alone, he was in the habit of lying like this for hours. He had told
her that since his accident it amused him more than anything else.
She came in without speaking, and, drawing off her long gauntlets,
folded them neatly together, and sat down, facing him.
Julian's eyes moved toward her as she entered; but he gave her no
further greeting, and after a speculative glance his eyes returned to
the ceiling.
"It's a pity," said Lady Verny, thoughtfully, "that poor child has to go
back to the town hall next week, a dreadful, drafty place, and be made
love to by a common little town clerk."
Julian's eyes flickered for a moment, but did not change their position.
"Town clerks," he observed, "are, I feel sure, distinguished persons who
confine their passions to rates and taxes."
"That must make it all the more trying," said Lady Verny. "But I don't
mind the town clerk as much as I mind the drafts. Stella had pleurisy
before she came here; and you know what girls who do that kind of work
eat--ghastly little messes, slopped on to marble tables, and tasting
like last week's wash."
"Well, why the devil doesn't she look for another job?" Julian asked
irritably. "She has brains enough for twenty. That's what I dislike
about women: they get stuck anywhere. No dash in 'em, no initiative, no
judgment." It was not what he disliked about women.
"She has tried," said Lady Verny. "The man she hoped to get a job from
wouldn't have her. She tried this morning."
Julian's eyes moved now; they shot like a hawk's on to his mother's,
while his body lay as still as a stone figure on a tomb.
"Then it was a trap," he said coldly. "I wondered. I thought we'd
settled you were going to leave me alone."
"Yes," said Lady Verny in a gentle, even voice, "I know we had, Julian;
but I can't bear it."
Julian's eyes changed and softened. He put his hand on her knee and let
it rest there for a moment.
"I can, if it's only you," he said; "but I can't stand a lot of
sympathetic women. One's a lot."
"You don't like her, then?" his mother asked. "I'm sorry; I always did
from the first day I saw her. I don't know why; she hasn't any
behavior."
"I don't dislike her," said Julian. "I don't think her behavior matters.
She isn't at all a bother. I rather like her being so awfully little a
woman; it's restful. Half the time I don't notice if she's in the room
or not."
"And the other half of the time?" Lady Verny asked, with apparent
carelessness.
"Oh, the other half of the time," said Julian, with a little, twisted
smile, "I quite appreciate the fact that she is. Especially when you've
taken the trouble to dress her as you did last night."
"I had to see what she looked like," Lady Verny explained defensively.
"I think, if you want her to stay in this house," said Julian, dryly,
"you'd better let her look as little like that again as possible. I
might have tolerated a secretary if I had wanted to write a book; but
I'd tolerate no approach to a picture. She can go and be picturesque at
the town hall. My artistic sense has already been satisfied up to the
brim. How did you get her to take the clothes she had on last night?"
"I told her," said Lady Verny, blushing, "that I had the materials by
me, and couldn't possibly use them, as I was too old for light colors,
and Girton could make her a simple little dress. And then I stood over
Girton. As a matter of fact, I _did_ send for the green jade comb and
the shoes and stockings."
"You seem to me," said Julian, "to have entered most light-heartedly
upon a career of crime and deceit unusual at your age. I don't wonder
that you blush for it."
"It wasn't only you, Julian," Lady Verny pleaded. "I did want to help
the girl. I can't bear public offices for gentlewomen. It's so
unsuitable!"
"Most," agreed Julian. "But, my dear mother, this is a world in which
the unsuitable holds an almost perfect sway, a fact which your usual
good sense seldom overlooks."
"You don't know," said Lady Verny, earnestly, "how even a bad patch of
ground facing north _can_ improve with cultivation."
"Do what you like with the north side of the garden," replied Julian,
"do even what you like with the apparently malleable Miss Waring; but
please don't try the gardening habit any more on me."
Lady Verny sighed. Julian looked as inexpressive and immovable as a
stone crusader.
Lady Verny was a patient woman, and she knew that, once seed is dropped,
you must leave it alone.
She had learned to abstain from all the little labors of love which are
its only consolations. From the first she had realized that the things
she longed to do for Julian he preferred to have done for him by a
servant.
She had accepted his preferences as the only outlet of her emotions; but
when she saw he was fast approaching the place where nothing is left but
dislikes, she made an effort to dislodge him. She was not sure, but she
thought that she had failed. Without speaking again, she went back to
the garden and did a little more digging before lunch. The earth was
more malleable than Julian; digging altered it.
If you have never been able to buy any clothes except those which you
could afford, none of them having any direct relation to the other, but
merely replacing garments incapable of further use, to be dressed
exactly as you should be is to obtain a new consciousness. It was not
really Stella who looked with curious eyes at herself in a long mirror
beneath the skilful hands of Girton. It was some hidden creature of
triumphant youth with a curious, heady thirst for admiration. She gazed
at herself with alien eyes.
"It's like an olive-tree," she said dreamily to Girton, "a silvery gray
olive-tree growing in the South."
"I dare say, Miss," said Girton; "but if you was to remember when you
sit down just to bring your skirts a trifle forward, it would sit
better."
"Yes, Girton," said Stella, submissively. But the submission was only
skin-deep. She knew that whatever she did, she couldn't go far wrong;
her dress wouldn't let her. It gave her a freedom beyond the range of
conduct. People whose clothes fit them, as its sheath of green fits a
lily of the valley, become independent of their souls.
Julian's eyes had met hers last night with a perfectly different
expression in them. He was too polite to look surprised, but he looked
as soon as it was convenient, again.
Usually he looked at Stella as if he wanted to be nice to her, but last
night for the first time he had looked as if he wished Stella to think
him nice. She had had to hold her head up because of the jade comb.
It wouldn't matter how either of them looked now, as she was going away
so soon; but she was glad that for once he had noticed her, even if his
notice was inspired only by the green dress.
Julian did not appear at dinner; it was the first time since Stella's
arrival that this had happened.
"He's had a bad day," Lady Verny explained. "He will get about more than
he ought. It's a great strain on him, and then he suffers from fatigue
and misery--not pain, exactly. I don't think he would mind that so much,
but it makes him feel very helpless. He wants his chess though, if you
don't mind going into his library and playing with him."
Julian was sitting up in his arm-chair when Stella joined him. His back
was to the light, and the chess-board in front of him.
His face was gray and haggard, but there was a dogged spark of light in
his eyes, as if he was amused at something.
"Thanks tremendously for coming in to cheer me up," he said quickly.
"You see, I've dispensed with Ostrog for the evening, to prevent further
comparison between us. D'you mind telling me why you didn't let me know
this morning that, if I wrote a book, you'd work for me?"
Stella flushed, and let her jade comb sink beneath its level.
"If you didn't want to write the book," she said, "why should you want a
secretary?"
"It didn't occur to you, I suppose," Sir Julian asked, "that if I wanted
the secretary, I might wish to write the book?"
"What has Lady Verny said to you?" Stella demanded, lifting her head
suddenly, and looking straight across at him.
"Nothing that need make you at all fierce," Julian replied, with
amusement. "She said you were going back to the town hall next week, and
I said I thought it was a pity. You don't seem to me in the least fitted
for a town hall. I've no doubt you can do incredible things with drains,
but I fear I have a selfish preference for your playing chess with me.
My mother added that it was my fault; you were prepared, if I wished to
write a book, to see me through it."
"Yes," said Stella, defensively, "I was prepared, if I thought you
wanted it."
"I suppose you and my mother thought it would be good for me, didn't
you?" asked Julian, suavely. "I have an idea that you had concocted a
treacherous underground plot."
"We--I--well, if you'd _liked_ it, it might have been good for you,"
Stella admitted.
"Most immoral," said Julian, dryly, "to try to do good to me behind my
back, wasn't it? You see, I dislike being done good to; I happen very
particularly to dislike it, and above all things I dislike it being done
without my knowledge."
"Yes," said Stella, humbly. "So do I; I see that now. It was silly and
interfering. Only, if you _had_ been interested--"
"I wasn't in the least interested," said Julian, implacably, "but I'm
glad you agree about your moral obliquity. My mother, of course, was
worse; but there is no criminal so deep seated in her career as a woman
under the sway of the maternal instinct. One allows for that. And now,
Miss Waring, since neither of us likes being done good to, and since
it's bad for you to go back to the town hall, and worse for me to remain
unemployed, shall we pool this shocking state of things and write the
book together?"
"Oh!" cried Stella with a little gasp. "But are you sure you want to?"
Julian laughed.
"I may be politer than Ostrog," he said, "but I assure you that, like
him, unless reduced by force, I never do what I don't want to."
"And you haven't been reduced?" Stella asked a little doubtfully.
"Well," said Julian, beginning to place his chessmen, "I don't think so;
do you? Where was the force?"
Stella could not answer this question, and Lady Verny, who might have
been capable of answering it, was up-stairs.