It puzzled Stella extremely that she found herself unable to say, "What
is it that you want, Julian?" She knew that there was something that he
wanted, and there was nothing that she would dream of denying him. What,
therefore, could be simpler than asking him? And yet she did not want to
ask him.
She began by trying hard to understand what it was that he had told her
above the bluebell wood, because she thought if she discovered what he
wanted then, the rest would follow. He had wanted a particular kind of
help from her; that was plain. It had something to do with her being a
woman; that was plainer. But was it to his advantage or to his
disadvantage that she was a woman? Ought she to suppress the fact or
build on it? And how could she build on it or suppress it when she never
felt in the least like anything else but a woman?
Cicely used to say that the only safe way with men was never to be nice
to them; but Stella had always thought any risk was better than such a
surly plan. Besides, Julian couldn't mean that. He liked her to be nice
to him. She saw quite plainly that he liked her to be nice to him.
Unfortunately, Julian had taken for granted in Stella a certain
experience of life, and Stella had never had any such experience. She
had never once recognized fancy in the eyes of any man. As for love, it
belonged solely to her dreams; and the dreams of a woman of
twenty-eight, unharassed by fact, are singularly unreliable. She thought
of Mr. Travers, but he did not count. She had never been able to realize
what he had felt for her. Her relation to him was as formal, despite his
one singular lapse, as that of a passenger to a ticket-collector. She
had nothing to go on but her dreams.
In her very early youth she had selected for heroes two or three
characters from real life. They were Cardinal Newman, Shelley, and
General Gordon. Later, on account of a difference in her religious
opinions, she had replaced the Cardinal by Charles Lamb. None of these
characters was in the least like Julian.
One had apparently no experience of women, the other two had sisters,
and Shelley's expression of love was vague and might be said to be
misleading.
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not.
Life had unfortunately refused to meet Shelley on the same terms, and
difficulties had ensued, but it was this impracticable side of him that
Stella had accepted. She had skipped Harriet, and landed on
"Epipsychidion." Love was to her "a green and golden immortality." She
was not disturbed by it, because the deepest experiences of life do not
disturb us. What disturbs us is that which calls us away from them.
It made it easier to wait to find out what Julian wanted that he was
happier with her. He was hardly ever impersonal or cold now, and he
sometimes made reasons to be with her that had nothing to do with their
work.
It was June, and the daffodils had gone, but there were harebells and
blue butterflies upon the downs, and in the hedges wild roses and Star
of Bethlehem. Lady Verny spent all her time in the garden. She said the
slugs alone took hours. They were supposed by the uninitiated to be
slow, but express trains could hardly do more damage in less time. So
Stella and Ostrog took their walks alone, and were frequently
intercepted by Julian on their return.
Julian, who ought to have known better, thought that the situation might
go on indefinitely, and Stella did not know that there was any
situation; she knew only that she was in a new world. There was sorrow
outside it, there was sorrow even in her heart for those outside it; but
through all sorrow was this unswerving, direct experience of joy. She
would have liked to share it with Julian, but she thought it was all her
own, and that what he liked about her--since he liked something--was her
ability to live beyond the margin of her personal delight. The color of
it was in her eyes, and the strength of it at her heart; but she never
let it interfere with Julian. She was simply a companion with a hidden
treasure. She sometimes thought that having it made her a better
companion; but even of this she was not sure.
It made her a little nervous taking Ostrog out alone, but she always
took the lead with him, and slipped it on him if a living creature
appeared on the horizon. There were some living creatures he didn't
mind, but you couldn't be sure which.
One evening she was tired and forgot him. There was a wonderful sunset.
She stood to watch it in a hollow of the downs where she was waiting for
Julian. The soft, gray lines rose up on each side of her, immemorial,
inalterable lines of gentle land. The air was as transparently clear as
water, and hushed with evening. Far below her, where the small church
steeple sprang, she saw the swallows cutting V-shaped figures to and fro
above the shining elms.
For a long time she heard no sound, and then, out of the stillness, came
a faint and hollow boom. Far away across the placid shapes of little
hills, over the threatened seas, the guns sounded from France--the dim,
intolerable ghosts of war.
Ostrog, impatient of her stillness, bounded to the edge of the hollow
and challenged the strange murmur to the echo. He was answered
immediately. A sheep-dog shot up over the curve of the down. Ostrog was
at his throat in an instant.
There was a momentary recoil for a fresh onslaught, and then the shrieks
of the preliminary tussle changed into the full-throated growl of
combat. There was every prospect that one or other of them would be dead
before their jaws unlocked.
Stella hovered above them in frantic uncertainty. She was helpless till
she saw that there was no other help. The sheep-dog had had enough; a
sudden scream of pain stung her into action. She seized Ostrog's hind
leg and twisted it sharply from under him.
At the moment she did so she heard Julian's voice:
"Wait! For God's sake, let go!"
But she could not wait; the sheep-dog was having the life squeezed out
of him. She tugged and twisted again. Ostrog's grip slackened, he flung
a snap at her across his shoulder, and then, losing his balance, turned
on her in a flash. She guarded her head, but his teeth struck at her
shoulder. She felt herself thrust back by his weight, saw his red jaws
open for a fresh spring, and then Julian's crutch descended sharply on
Ostrog's head. Ostrog dropped like a stone, the bob-tailed sheep-dog
crawled safely away, and Stella found herself in Julian's arms.
[Illustration: She tugged and twisted again]
"Dearest, sure you're not hurt? Sure?" he implored breathlessly, and
then she knew what his eyes asked her, they were so near her own and so
intent; and while her lips said, "Sure, Julian," she knew her own eyes
answered them.
He drew her close to his heart and kissed her again and again.
The idea of making any resistance to him never occurred to Stella.
Nothing that Julian asked of her could seem strange. She only wondered,
if that was what he wanted, why he had not done it before.
He put her away from him almost roughly.
"There," he said, "I swore I'd never touch you! And I have! I'm a brute
and a blackguard. Try and believe I'll never do it again. Promise you
won't leave me? Promise you'll forgive me? I was scared out of my wits,
and that's a fact. D' you think you can forgive me, Stella?"
"But what have I to forgive?" Stella asked. "I let you kiss me."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Julian, half laughing, "you are an honest woman!
Well, if you did, you mustn't 'let me' again, that's all. Ostrog, you
wretch, lie down! You ought to have a sound thrashing. I'd have shot you
if you'd hurt her; but as I've rather scored over the transaction, I'll
let you off."
Stella looked at Julian thoughtfully.
"Why mustn't I let you again?" she inquired, "if that is what you want?"
Julian, still laughing, but half vexed, looked at her.
"Look here," he said, "didn't I tell you you'd got to help me? I can't
very well keep you here and behave to you like that, can I?"
Stella considered for a moment, then she said quietly, "Were you
flirting with me, Julian?"
"I wish to God I was!" said Julian, savagely. "If I could get out of it
as easily as that, d'you suppose I should have been such a fool as not
to have tried?"
"I don't think you would have liked me to despise you," said Stella,
gently. "You see, if you had given me nothing when I was giving you all
I had, I should have despised you."
Julian stared at her. She was obviously speaking the truth, but in his
heart he knew that if she had loved him and he had flirted with her, he
would have expected her to be the one to be despised.
He put out his hand to her and then drew it back sharply.
"No, I'm hanged if I'll touch you," he said under his breath. "I love
you all right,--you needn't despise me for that,--but telling you of
it's different. I was deadly afraid you'd see; any other woman would
have seen. I've held on to myself for all I was worth, but it hasn't
been the least good, really. I suppose I've got to be honest about it: I
can't keep you with me, darling; you'll have to go. It makes it a
million times worse your caring, but it makes it better, too."
"I don't see why it should be worse at all," said Stella, calmly. "If we
both care, and care really, I don't see that anything can be even bad."
Julian pulled up pieces of the turf with his hand. He frowned at her
sternly.
"You mustn't tempt me," he said; "I told you once I can't marry."
"You told me once, when you didn't know I cared," agreed Stella. "I
understand your feeling that about a woman who didn't care or who only
cared a little, but not about a woman who really cares."
"But, my dear child," said Julian, "that's what just makes it utterly
impossible. I can't understand how I ever was such a selfish brute as to
dream of taking Marian. I was ill at the time, and hadn't sized it up;
but if you think I'm going to let _you_ make such a sacrifice, you're
mistaken. I'd see you dead before I married you!"
Stella's eyebrows lifted, but she did not seem impressed.
"I think," she said gently, "you talk far too much as if it had only got
to do with you. Suppose I don't wish to see myself dead?"
"Well, you must try to see the sense of it," Julian urged. "You're young
and strong; you ought to have a life. I'm sure you love children. You
like to be with me, and all that; you're the dearest companion a man
ever had. It isn't easy, Stella, to say I won't keep you; don't make it
any harder for me. I've looked at this thing steadily for months. I
don't mind owning that I thought you might get to care if I tried hard
enough to make you; but, darling, I honestly didn't try. You can't say I
wasn't awfully disagreeable and cross. I knew I was done for long ago,
but I thought you were all right. You weren't like a girl in love, you
were so quiet and--and sisterly and all that. If I'd once felt you were
beginning to care in that way, I'd have made some excuse; I wouldn't
have let it come to this. I'd rather die than hurt you."
"Well, but you needn't hurt me," said Stella, "and neither of us need
die. It's not your love that wants to get rid of me, Julian; it's your
pride. But I haven't any pride in that sense, and I'm not going to let
you do it."
"By Jove! you won't!" cried Julian. His eyes shot a gleam of amusement
at her. It struck him that the still little figure by his side was
extraordinarily formidable. He had never thought her formidable before.
He had thought her brilliant, intelligent, and enchanting, not
formidable; but he had no intention of giving way to her. Formidable or
not, he felt quite sure of himself. He couldn't let her down.
"The sacrifice is all the other way," Stella went on. "You would be
sacrificing me hopelessly to your pride if you refused to marry me
simply because some one of all the things you want to give me you can't
give me. Do you suppose I don't mind,--mind for you, I mean,
hideously,--mind so much that if I were sure marrying you would make you
feel the loss more, I'd go away from you this minute and never come near
you again? But I do not think it will make it worse for you. You will
have me; you will have my love and companionship, and they are--valuable
to you, aren't they, Julian?"
Julian's eyes softened and filled.
"Yes," he muttered, turning his head away from her; "they're valuable."
"Then," she said, "if you are like that to me, if I want you always, and
never anybody else, have you a right to rob me of yourself, Julian?"
"If I could believe," he said, his voice shaking, "that you'd never be
sorry, never say to yourself, 'Why did I do it?' But, oh, my dear, you
know so little about the ordinary kind of love! You don't realize a bit,
and I do. It must make it all so confoundedly hard for you, and I'm such
an impatient chap. I mightn't be able to help you. And you're right: I'm
proud. If I once thought you cared less or regretted marrying me, it
would clean put the finish on it. But you're not right about not loving
you, Stella, that's worse than pride; loving you makes it impossible. I
can't take the risk for you. I'll do any other mortal thing you want,
but not that!"
"Julian," asked Stella in a low voice, "do you think I am a human
being?"
"Well, no!" said Julian. "Since you ask me, more like a fairy or an elf
or something. Why?"
"Because you're not treating me as if I were," said Stella, steadily.
"Human beings have a right to their own risks. They know their own
minds, they share the dangers of love."
"Then one of 'em mustn't take them all," said Julian, quickly.
"How could one take them all?" said Stella. "I have to risk your pride,
and you have to risk my regret. As a matter of fact, your pride is more
of a certainty than a risk, and my regret is a wholly imaginary idea,
founded upon your ignorance of my character. Still, I'm willing to put
it like that to please you. You have every right to sacrifice yourself
to your own theories, but what about sacrificing me? I give you no such
right."
For the first time Julian saw what loving Stella would be like; he would
never be able to get to the end of it. Marriage would be only the
beginning. She had given him her heart without an effort, and he found
that she was as inaccessible as ever. His soul leaped toward this new,
unconquerable citadel. He held himself in hand with a great effort.
"What you don't realize," he said, "is that our knowledge of life is not
equal. If I take you at your word, you will make discoveries which it
will be too late for you to act upon. You cannot wish me to do what is
not fair to you."
"I want my life to be with you," said Stella. "Whatever discoveries I
make, I shall not want them to be anywhere else. You do not understand,
but if you send me away, you will take from me the future which we might
have used together. You will not be giving me anything in its place but
disappointment and utter uselessness. You'll make me--morally--a
cripple. Do you still wish me to go away from you?"
Julian winced as if she had struck him.
"No, I'll marry you," he said; "but you've made me furiously angry.
Please go home by yourself. I wonder you dare use such an illustration
to me."
Stella slipped over the verge of the hollow. She, too, wondered how she
had dared; but she knew quite well that if she hadn't dared, Julian
would have sent her away.