It is always hard to return in the character of a captive to a scene in
which you have played the part of victor, and Julian had told the truth
to Stella when he said that what stung him most was his new relation to
women. Men knew what he had done; many of them were facing the same
odds. They had a common experience and a common language to fall back
upon. They were his mates, but they did not come near enough to him to
hurt him; they had no wish to understand or help his sufferings. It was
sufficient for them to say, "Hard luck!" and leave that side of it
alone. Women were different: he had pursued women.
Julian had a good average reputation. Very few women attracted him
beyond a certain point; but all his experiences had been successes.
He had loved Marian with the best love his heart had known; but it had
been the love of Marian as a creature to possess. It had not been an
invasion of his personality. He would have given anything to possess
Marian; he had not been for a moment possessed by her. It did not seem
to Julian that a woman could ever do more than charm a man.
She could charm you, if you let her, to distraction; but if you had any
strength, you remained intact. Nothing in you moved to meet her charm.
You simply, not to put too fine a point upon it, took what you could
get. Naturally, if you could no longer let a woman charm you, she
became, if she wasn't merely a nuisance, a menace.
Julian acquiesced in Stella's remaining as his secretary only because he
had a theory that she did not charm him. He could not make head or tail
of her. He recognized that she had a mind, but it was a perplexing and
unchallenging mind, a private enjoyment of her own. She never attempted
to attract Julian by it. If he stirred her, she ran off like a poet or a
bird, upon her subject. She did not, as Julian supposed all women did,
put Julian himself at the other end of her subject.
She had attractions: sympathy, wit, a charming, fugitive smile. She
arranged them no better than she arranged her hair; and it was
lamentable how she arranged her hair.
Julian could not have borne her constant presence if she had not effaced
herself; his bitter self-consciousness would have been up in arms
against an effective personality at his elbow. Nevertheless, he was
obscurely annoyed that Stella made no attempt to impress him. She would
sit there morning after morning without looking at him, without noticing
him, without the lift of an eyelid to make him feel that he was anything
to her but the supply of copy for his chapter. She was as inhuman and
unpretentious as a piece of moss on a wall.
But her voice haunted him; he would catch snatches of her talk with Lady
Verny in the garden. His mother had no scruple against intimacy with
Stella, and Stella was not docile with Lady Verny; she was enchanting.
She had a tantalizing voice full of music, with little gusts of mischief
and revolt in it.
Julian told himself that he must put up with Stella for his mother's
sake. Lady Verny did not make friends easily, and liked bookworms. He
dismissed Stella as a bookworm. She had ways that, he told himself, were
intensely annoying. She came punctually to her work,--probably the poor
town clerk had taught her that much,--but she had no other
punctualities. Bells, meals, the passage of time, had no landmarks for
her. She seemed to drift along the hours like a leaf upon a stream.
She was disorderly: she left things about; books face downward, scraps
of paper, flowers. She was always saying that she had lost her
fountain-pen. She didn't say this to Julian, but he heard her say it to
Ostrog, whom she accused outrageously of having eaten it, to all the
servants, and to his mother. None of them seemed to mind, not even
Ostrog.
Ostrog's growls had ceased. He slept in Stella's presence, uneasily,
with half a red eye upon her; but he slept.
After a few days he chose a position close to her feet and slept
solidly, with snores; finally he took her out for walks. Julian approved
of this, since she would go all over the place by herself, hatless, and
looking like a tramp, it was as well she should be accompanied by
Ostrog.
Ostrog had never before been known to go for walks with any one except
Julian. He took plenty of exercise independently of human control in the
direction of rabbits.
Stella was extremely wasteful with writing-paper. Over and over again
Julian saw her throw half a sheet, white and untouched, into the
waste-paper basket; and she cut string. It was curious how little Julian
felt annoyed by these depredations, considering how much he wished to be
annoyed. He was not by nature economical, but he lashed himself into
imaginary rages with Stella, and told her that she must once for all
turn over a new leaf. She was quite meek about it, and next time she
lost her fountain-pen she went into the village and bought a new one
which wouldn't write. She paid for it with her own money, and Julian
wanted to box her ears. He subsequently found the other one on the rack
where he kept his pipes.
For some time he believed that she was not provocative because she was
negligible. She was one of those clever neutral women who haven't the
wit to be attractive.
Then one day it flashed across him that for all her mild agreement with
his wishes, her spirit never for one instant surrendered to him. It did
not even think of escaping; it was free.
This startled Julian. He liked evasive women, but he had thought Stella
extraordinarily the opposite. She was as frank as a boy. But was this
frankness merely because she was dealing with what was non-essential to
her? He tried to make her talk; he succeeded perfectly.
Stella would talk about anything he liked. She enjoyed talking. She made
Julian enjoy it; and then he found that he had arrived nowhere. She gave
him her talk, as she gave him her attention, exactly as she would have
got up and handed him a book if he had asked for it. There was no more
of herself in it than in the simplest of her services.
Julian was not sure when it was that he discovered that he had a new
feeling about her, which was even more disconcerting than her
independence; it was anxiety.
Perhaps it was during the extremely slow and tiresome week-end on which
Stella paid a visit to her family. She went without her umbrella,--not
that it would have done much good if she had taken it, for Julian found,
to his extreme vexation, that it was full of holes,--the weather was
atrocious, and she came back with a cold.
It might have been gathered that no one at Amberley had ever had a cold
before. As far as Julian was concerned nobody ever had.
Julian possessed a sane imagination, and generally treated the subject
of health with a mixture of common sense and indifference. But this cold
of Stella's!
It was no good Stella's saying it was a slight cold; he forced her to
take a list of remedies suitable for severe bronchitis. He quarreled
with his mother for saying that people had been known to recover from
colds, and finally he sent for the doctor.
The doctor, being a wise man with a poor country practice, agreed with
Julian that you could not be too careful about colds, and thought that
priceless old port taken with her meals would not do Miss Waring any
harm.
Stella disliked port very much, but she drank it submissively for a
week.
"Nobody can call me fussy," Julian announced sternly, "but I will not
have a neglected cold in the house."
He was not contradicted, though everybody knew that for weeks the cook
and two housemaids had been sneezing about the passages.
It was a strange feeling, this sharp compulsion of fear. It taught
Julian something. It taught him that what happened to Stella happened to
himself. He no longer thought of pursuit in connection with her. He had
found her in his heart.
It was an extremely awkward fact, but he accepted it. After all, he had
crushed passions before which had gone against his code. He had iron
self-control, and he thought it would be quite possible to stamp out
this fancy before it got dangerous, even while he retained her presence.
He couldn't remain friendly to her, but he could be civil enough. He
tried this process. For nine days it worked splendidly. Of course Stella
didn't like it, but it worked. She had too much sense to ask him what
was the matter, but she looked wistful. On the tenth she cut her finger
sharpening a pencil, and Julian called her "Darling." Fortunately she
didn't hear him, and he managed to bandage her finger up without losing
his head; but he knew that it had been an uncommonly near shave, and if
she hurt herself again, he wasn't at all sure how he would stand it.
Love flooded him like a rising tide; all his landmarks became submerged.
He could not tell how far the tide would spread. He clung to Stella's
faults with positive vindictiveness despite the fact that he had
surprised himself smiling over them. He dared not let himself think
about her qualities. The one support left to him was her own
unconsciousness. He needn't tell her, and she wouldn't guess; and as
long as she didn't know, he could keep her. If she did know, she would
have to go away; even if she didn't want to go, as she most probably
would, he would have to send her away. He became as watchful of himself
as he had been when his life depended on every word he said; but he
could not help his eyes. When other people were there he did not look at
Stella at all.
It was the first day Stella had been late for her work, and Julian had
prepared to be extremely angry until he saw her face. She came slowly
toward the open window out of the garden, looking oddly drawn and white.
The pain in her eyes hurt Julian intolerably.
"Hullo!" he said quickly, "what's wrong?"
She did not answer at once; her hands trembled. She was holding a
letter, face downward, as if she hated holding it.
"Your mother asked me to tell you myself," she began. "I am afraid to
tell you; but she seemed to think you would rather--"
"Yes," said Julian, quickly. "Are you going away?"
"Oh, no," whispered Stella. "If it was only that!"
Julian said, "Ah!" It was an exclamation that sounded like relief. He
leaned back in his chair, and did nothing further to help her.
Stella moved restlessly about the room. She had curious graceful
movements like a wild creature; she became awkward only when she knew
she was expected to behave properly. Finally she paused, facing a
bookcase, with her back to Julian.
"Well?" asked Julian, encouragingly. "Better get it over, hadn't we?
World come to pieces worse than usual this morning?"
"I don't know how to tell you," she said wretchedly. "For you perhaps it
has--I have heard from Marian."
Julian picked up his pipe, which he had allowed to go out when Stella
came in, relit it, and smiled at the back of her head. He looked
extraordinarily amused and cheerful.
"She hadn't written to me," Stella went on without turning round, "for
ages and ages,--you remember I told you?--and now she has."
"She was always an uncertain correspondent," said Julian, smoothly. "Am
I to see this letter? Message for me, perhaps? Or doesn't she know
you're here?"
"Oh, no!" cried Stella, quickly. "I mean there's nothing in it you
couldn't see, of course. There _is_ a kind of message; still, she didn't
mean you actually to see it. She heard somehow that I was here, and she
wanted me to tell you--" Stella's voice broke, but she picked herself up
and went on, jerking out the cruel words that shook her to the heart,--
"she wanted me to tell you that she's--she's going to be married."
Stella heard a curious sound from Julian incredibly like a chuckle. She
flinched, and held herself away from him. He would not want her to see
how he suffered. There was a long silence.
"Stella," said Julian at last in that singular, soft, new voice of his
that he occasionally used when they were alone together, "the ravages of
pain are now hidden. You can turn round."
She came back to him uncertainly, and sat down by the window at his
feet. He had a tender teasing look that she could not quite understand.
His eyes themselves never wavered as they met hers, but the eagerness in
them wavered; his tenderness seemed to hold it back.
She thought that Julian's eyes had grown curiously friendly lately.
Despite his pain, they were very friendly now.
"Any details?" Julian asked. "Don't be afraid to tell me. I'm not--I
mean I'm quite prepared for it."
"It's to be next month," she said hurriedly. "She didn't want you to see
it first in the papers."
"Awfully considerate of her, wasn't it?" interrupted Julian. "By the
by, tell her when you write that she couldn't have chosen anybody better
to break it to me than you."
"O Julian," Stella pleaded, "please don't laugh at me! Do if it makes
you any easier, of course; only I--I mind so horribly!"
"Do you?" asked Julian, carefully. "I think I'm rather glad you mind,
but you mustn't mind horribly; only as much as a friend should mind for
another friend."
"That is the way I mind," said Stella.
She had a large interpretation of friendship.
"Oh, all right," said Julian, rather crossly. "Go on!"
"She says it's a Captain Edmund Stanley, and he's a D.S.O. They're to be
married very quietly while he's on leave."
"Lucky man!" said Julian. "Any money?"
"Oh, I think so," murmured Stella, anxiously skipping the letter in her
lap. "She says he's fairly well off."
"I think," observed Julian, "that we may take it that if Marian says
Captain Stanley is fairly well off, his means need give us no anxiety.
What?"
"Julian, must you talk like that?" Stella pleaded. "You'll make it so
hard for yourself if you're bitter."
"On the whole, I think I must," replied Julian, reflectively. "If I
talked differently, you mightn't like it; and, anyhow, I daren't run the
risk. I might break down, you know, and you wouldn't like that, would
you? Shall we get to work?"
"Oh, not this morning!" Stella cried. "I'm going out; I knew you
wouldn't want me."
"Did you though?" asked Julian. "But I happen to want you most
particularly. What are you going to do about it?"
She looked at him in surprise. He had a peculiarly teasing expression
which did not seem appropriate to extreme grief.
"I'll stay, of course, if you want me," she said quietly.
"You're a very kind little elf," said Julian, "but I don't think you
must make a precedent of my wanting you, or else--look here, d' you mind
telling me a few things about your--your friendship with Marian?"
Stella's face cleared. She saw now why he wanted her to stay. She turned
her eyes back to the garden.
"I'll tell you anything you like to know," she answered.
"You liked her?" asked Julian.
"She was so different from everybody else in my world," Stella
explained. "I don't think I judged her; I just admired her. She was
awfully good to me. I didn't see her very often, but it was all the
brightness of my life."
"Stella, you've never told me about your life," Julian said
irrelevantly. "Will you some day? I want to know about the town hall and
that town clerk fellow."
"There isn't anything to tell you," said Stella. "I mean about that, and
Marian was never in my life. She couldn't have been, you know; but she
was my special dream. I used to love to hear about all her experiences
and her friends; and then--do you remember the night of Chaliapine's
opera? It was the only opera I ever went to, so of course I remember;
but perhaps you don't. You were there with Marian. I think I knew
then--"
"Knew what?" asked Julian, leaning forward a little. "You seem awfully
interested in that gravel path, Stella?"
"Knew," she said, without turning her head, "what you meant to her."
"Where were you?" Julian inquired. "Looking down from the ceiling or up
from a hole in the ground, where the good people come from? I never saw
you."
"Ah, you wouldn't," said Stella. "I was in the gallery. Do you remember
the music?"
"Russian stuff," Julian said. "Pack of people going into a fire, yes.
Funnily enough, I've thought of it since, more than once, too; but I
didn't know you were there."
"And then when you were hurt," Stella went on in a low voice, "Marian
told me. Julian, she did mind _frightfully_. I always wanted you to know
that she _did_ mind."
"It altered her plans, didn't it," said Julian, "quite considerably?"
"You've no business to talk like that!" said Stella, angrily. "It's not
fair--or kind."
"And does it matter to you whether I'm fair or kind?" Julian asked, with
deadly coolness.
"I beg your pardon," said Stella, quickly. "Of course it has nothing to
do with me. I have no right to--to mind what you say."
"I'm glad you recognize that," said Julian, quietly. "It facilitates our
future intercourse. And you agreed with Marian that she only did her
duty in painstakingly adhering to her given word? Perhaps you encouraged
her to do it? The inspiration sounds quite like yours."
She looked at him now.
"Julian," she said, "am I all wrong? Would you rather that we weren't
friends at all? You are speaking as if you hated me."
"No, I'm not," he said quickly, "you little goose! How could I keep you
here if I hated you? Have a little sense. No, don't put your hand there,
because, if you do, I shall take it, and I'm rather anxious just now not
to. You shall go directly you've answered me this. Did you agree with
Marian's point of view about me? You know what it was, don't you? She
didn't love me any more; she wished I had been killed, and she decided
to stick to me. She thought I'd be grateful. Do you think I ought to
have been grateful?"
"You know I don't! You know I don't!" cried Stella. "But why do you make
me say it? I simply hated it--hated her not seeing, not caring enough
to see, not caring enough to make you see. There! Is that all you wanted
me to say?"
"Practically," said Julian, "but I don't see why you should fly into a
rage over it. In your case, then, if it had been your case, you would
simply have broken off the engagement at once, like a sensible girl?"
"I can't imagine myself in such a situation," said Stella, getting up
indignantly.
"Naturally," interposed Julian smoothly. "But, still, if you had
happened, by some dreadful mischance, to find yourself engaged to me--"
"I should have broken it off directly," said Stella, turning to
go--"directly I found out--"
"Found out what?" asked Julian.
"That you were nothing but a cold-blooded tease!" cried Stella over her
shoulder.
"You perfect darling!" said Julian under his breath. "By Jove! that was
a narrow squeak!"