It would be too strong an expression to say that after Stella's
departure Julian suffered from reaction. He himself couldn't have
defined what he suffered from, but he was uneasy.
He had given himself away to Stella as he had never in his wildest
dreams supposed that one could give oneself away to a woman. But he
wasn't worrying about that; he hadn't minded giving himself away to
Stella.
Samson was the character in the Old Testament whom Julian most despised,
because he had let Delilah get things out of him. What Samson had got
back hadn't been worth it, and could probably have been acquired without
the sacrifice of his hair. He had simply given in to Delilah because he
had a soft spot for her; and Delilah quite blamelessly (from Julian's
point of view) had retaliated by crying out, "The Philistines be upon
thee, Samson!"
Julian had always felt perfectly safe with women of this type; they
couldn't have entrapped him. But there wasn't an inch of Delilah in
Stella. She had no Philistines up her sleeve for any of the
contingencies of life and she had not tried to get anything out of
Julian.
That was where his uneasiness began. He understood her sufficiently to
trust her, but he was aware that beyond his confidence she was a mapless
country; he did not even know which was water and which was land. His
uncertainty had made him shrink from telling Stella about Eugénie
Matisse.
If Marian had been sharp enough--she probably wouldn't have been--to
guess that Julian knew the girl in the picture, she would have known,
too, precisely what kind of girl she was, and she would have thought
none the worse of Julian.
But he didn't know what Stella expected. He wasn't afraid that she would
cast him off for that or any other of his experiences; then he would
have told her. She would have forgiven him as naturally as she loved
him; but what if her forgiveness had involved her pain?
He had spoken the truth when he told Stella that she had "put the fear
of God into him." Julian had not known much about God before or anything
about fear; but he was convinced now that the fear of God was not that
God might let you down, but that you might let down God. He wanted to be
as careful of Stella as if she had been a government secret.
Did she know in the least what she was in for. Or was she like an
unconscious Iphigenia vowed off to mortal peril by an inadvertent
parent?
He had done his best to make her realize the future, but there are
certain situations in life when doing one's best to make a person aware
of a fact is equivalent to throwing dust in his eyes. And Stella herself
might by a species of divine fooling, have outwitted both himself and
her. She might be marrying Julian for pity under the mask of love.
Her pity was divine, and he could stand it for himself perfectly; but he
couldn't stand it for her. Why had she shivered when he had said he was
going to bring her home? He cursed his helplessness. If he had not been
crippled he would have taken her by surprise, and let his instincts
judge for him; but he had had to lie there like a log, knowing that if
he asked her to come to him, she would have blinded him by her swift,
prepared responsiveness.
The moment on the downs hardly counted. She had been so frightened that
it had been like taking advantage of her to take her in his arms.
The one comfort he clung to was her fierce thrust at his pride. He
repeated it over and over to himself for reassurance. She had said, if
he wouldn't marry her, he would make her morally a cripple. That really
sounded like love, for only love dares to strike direct at the heart. If
he could see her, he knew it would be all right; if even she had written
(she had written, of course, but had missed the midnight post), he would
have been swept back into the safety of their shared companionship. But
in his sudden loneliness he mistrusted fortune. When a man has had the
conceit knocked out of him, he is not immediately the stronger for it;
and he is the more vulnerable to doubt not only of himself, but of
others. The saddest part of self-distrust is that it breeds suspicion.
It would be useless to speak to his mother about it, for, though a just
woman, she was predominantly his mother; she wanted Stella too much for
Julian to admit a doubt of Stella's wanting him for herself. She would
have tried to close all his questions with facts. This method of
discussion appealed to Julian as a rule, but he had begun to discover
that there are deeper things than facts.
Lady Verny was in London at a flower show, and Julian was sitting in the
summer-house, which he was planning to turn into a room for Stella. His
misgivings had not yet begun to interfere with his plans. He had just
decided to have one of the walls above the water meadows replaced by
glass when his attention was attracted by the most extraordinary figure
he had ever seen.
[Illustration: The most extraordinary figure we had ever seen]
She was advancing rapidly down a grass path, between Lady Verny's
favorite herbaceous borders, pursued by the butler. At times Thompson,
stout and breathless, succeeded in reaching her side, evidently for the
purpose of expostulation, only to be swept backward by the impetuosity
of her speed. Eurydice was upon a secret mission. She had borrowed a
pound from Stella with which to carry it out; and she was not going to
be impeded by a butler.
She no longer followed the theories of Mr. Bolt, but she still had to
wear out the kind of clothes that went with Mr. Bolt's theories. He
liked scarlet hats. Eurydice's hat was scarlet, and her dress was a long
purple robe that hung straight from her shoulders.
It was cut low in the neck, with a system of small scarlet tabloids let
in around the shoulders. Golden balls, which were intended to represent
pomegranates, dangled from her waist.
Eurydice's hair was thick and very dark; there was no doing anything
with it. Her eyebrows couched menacingly above her stormy eyes. Her
features were heavy and colorless, except her mouth, which was
unnaturally (and a little unevenly) red.
She wore no gloves,--she had left them behind in the train,--and she
carried a scarlet parasol with a broken rib.
"I wish you'd send this man away," she said as she approached Julian.
"He keeps getting under my feet, and I dislike menials. I saw where you
were for myself. I nearly got bitten by a brute of a dog on the terrace.
You have no right to keep a creature that's a menace to the public."
"I regret that you have been inconvenienced," said Julian, politely;
"but I must point out to you that the public are not expected upon the
terrace of a private garden."
"As far as that goes," said Eurydice, frowning at a big bed of blue
Delphiniums, "nobody has a right to have a private garden."
Thompson, with an enormous effort, physical as well as spiritual, cut
off the end of the border by a flying leap, and reached the young
woman's elbow.
"If you please, Sir Julian," he gasped, "this lady says she'd rather not
give her name. She didn't wish to wait in the hall, nor in the
drawing-room, sir, and I've left James sitting on Ostrog's 'ead,--or I'd
have been here before. What with one thing and another, Sir Julian, I
came as quickly as I could."
"I saw you did, Thompson," said Julian, with a gleam of laughter; "and
now you may go. Tell James to get off Ostrog's head." He turned his eyes
on his visitor. "I am Miss Waring," she said as the butler vanished.
"This is extraordinarily kind of you," Julian said, steadying himself
with one hand, and holding out his other to Eurydice. "I think you must
be Miss Eurydice, aren't you? I was looking forward to meeting you
to-morrow. I hope nothing is wrong with Stella?"
"Everything is wrong with her," flashed Eurydice, ignoring his
outstretched hand; "but she doesn't know I've come to talk to you about
it. She'd never forgive me if she did. So if I say anything you don't
like, you can revenge yourself on me by telling her. I haven't come to
be _kind_, as you call it. I care far too much for the truth."
"Still, you may as well sit down," said Julian, drawing a chair toward
her with his free hand. "The truth is quite compatible with a wicker
arm-chair. You needn't lean back in it if you're afraid of relaxing your
moral fiber.
"As to revenge, I always choose my own, and even if you make it
necessary, I don't suppose it will include your sister. What you suggest
would have the disadvantage of doing that, wouldn't it? I mean the
disadvantage to me. It hasn't struck you apparently as a disadvantage
that you are acting disloyally toward your sister in doing what you know
she would dislike."
Eurydice flung back her head and stared at him. She accepted the edge of
the wicker arm-chair provisionally. Her eyes traveled relentlessly over
Julian. She took in, and let him see that she took in, the full extent
of his injury; but she spared him pity. She looked as if she were
annoyed with him for having injuries.
"What I'm doing," she said, "is my business, not yours. It mightn't
please Stella,--I must take the risk of that,--but if it saves her from
you, it will be worth it."
Julian bowed; his eyes sparkled. An enemy struck him as preferable to a
secret doubt.
"I didn't know," she said after a slight pause which Julian did nothing
to relieve, "that you were as badly hurt as you appear to be. It makes
it harder for me to talk to you as freely as I had intended."
"I assure you," said Julian, smiling, "that you need have no such
scruples. My incapacities are local, and I can stand a long tongue as
well as most men, even if I like it as little."
"I thought you would be insolent, and you are insolent," said Eurydice,
with gloomy satisfaction. "That was one of the things I said to Stella."
Julian leaned forward, and for a moment his frosty, blue eyes softened
as he looked at her.
"I admit I'm not very civil if I'm wrongly handled," he said in a more
conciliatory tone. "Your manner was just a trifle unfortunate, Miss
Eurydice; but I'd really like to be friends with you. I've not forgotten
that Stella told me you were her 'special' sister. Shall we start quite
afresh, and you just tell me as nicely as you know how what wrong you
think I'm doing Stella?"
"I couldn't possibly be friends with you," Eurydice said coldly. "The
sight of you disgusts me."
Julian lowered his eyes for a moment; when he raised them again the
friendliness had gone. They were as hard as wind-swept seas.
"I suppose," he suggested quietly, "that you have some point to make.
Isn't that a little off it?"
"I don't mean physically," said Eurydice, with a wave of her hand which
included his crutches. "You can't help being a cripple. It is morally I
am sick to think of you. Here you are, surrounded by luxury, waited on
hand and foot by menials, and yet you can't face your hardships
alone--you are so parasitic by nature that you have to drag down a girl
like Stella by trading on her pity."
"It would," said Julian in a level voice, holding his temper down by an
effort, "be rather difficult for even the cleverest parasite to drag
your sister down in the sense of degrading her. Possibly you merely
refer to her having consented to marry me?"
"No, I don't," said Eurydice, obstinately. "I call it dragging a person
down if you make them sacrifice their integrity. Stella and I always
agreed about that before. She cared more for the truth than anything.
Now she doesn't; she cares more about hurting your feelings. I faced her
with it last night, and she never even attempted to answer me. She only
said, 'Oh, don't!' and covered her face with her hands."
"What unspeakable thing did you say to her?" asked Julian, savagely,
"to make her do that?"
Ostrog, released from James, rejoined them, cowering down at his
master's feet; he was aware that he was in the presence of an anger
fiercer than his own.
"I didn't come here to mince matters," said Eurydice, defiantly. "If you
want to know what I said to Stella, I asked her why she was going to
marry a tyrannical, sterile cripple?"
For a moment Julian did not answer her; when he did, he had regained an
even quieter manner than before.
"Very forcibly put," he said in a low voice; "and your sister covered
her face with her hands and said, 'Oh, don't!'--you must have felt very
proud of yourself."
"If you think I like hurting Stella, you're wrong," said Eurydice. "But
I'd rather hurt her now than see her whole life twisted out of shape by
giving way to a feeling that isn't the strongest feeling in her, or I
wouldn't have come down here. But she didn't deny it."
"What didn't she deny?" asked Julian.
"What I came to tell you," said Eurydice. "The strongest feeling in
Stella's life is her love for Mr. Travers, and she gave him up because
she discovered that it was also the strongest thing in mine."
Julian flung back his head.
"Seriously, Miss Eurydice," he asked, "are you asking me to believe that
your sister's in love with a town clerk?"
Eurydice flushed crimson under the undisguised amusement in Julian's
eyes. He was amused, even though he had suddenly remembered that Mr.
Travers was the name of the town clerk.
"Why not?" asked Eurydice, fiercely. "He's wonderful. He isn't like
you--he works. He's like Napoleon, only he's always right, and _he_
hasn't asked her to be his permanent trained nurse!"
Julian had a theory that you cannot swear at women; so he caught the
words back, and wondered what would happen if Eurydice said anything
worse.
"Don't you think," he said after a pause, "that if you insulted me once
every five minutes, and then took a little rest, we might finish
quicker? I will admit that there is no reason why Stella shouldn't be
in love with Mr. Travers except the reason that I have for thinking
she's in love with me."
"Well, she isn't," asserted Eurydice. "She's awfully fond of you, but it
all started with her finding out that you were unhappier than she was.
She came to you to get over what she felt about Mr. Travers, and to free
him to care for me; but he doesn't. That's how I found out; I asked
him."
"The deuce you did!" exclaimed Julian. "Poor old Travers!"
Eurydice ignored this flagrant impertinence. She repeated Mr. Travers's
exact words: "I cared for your sister, Miss Waring; I am not a
changeable man."
"But I notice," said Julian, politely, "that this profession of Mr.
Travers's feelings which you succeeded in wringing from him does not
include your sister's. I had already inferred from my slight knowledge
of your sister that Mr. Travers was attached to her. The inference was
easy."
"I hoped that myself," said Eurydice--"I mean, that she didn't care. I
wrote and asked Cicely. She's my other sister; she hates me, but she's
just. She doesn't know about you, of course. Would you like to see her
letter?"
"It seems a fairly caddish thing to do, doesn't it?" asked Julian,
pleasantly. "However, perhaps this is hardly the moment for being too
particular. Yes, you can hand me over the letter." Julian read:
My dear Eurydice:
You ask if I think Stella cared for Mr. Travers. I dislike this
kind of question very much. However, as you seem to have some
qualms of conscience at last, you may as well know that I think she
did. She's never had anything for herself. You've always taken all
there was to take, and I dare say she thought Mr. Travers ought to
be included. She never told me that she cared for him, but of
course even you must know that Stella wouldn't do such a thing as
that. She spoke during her illness of him once in a way that made
me suspect what she was feeling, added to which I was sure that she
was struggling against great mental pain, as well as physical. She
evidently wanted to get away from the town hall and leave Mr.
Travers to you. You can draw your own inferences from these facts.
Stella would rather be dragged to pieces by wild horses than tell
you any more; so, if I were you, I would avoid asking her.
Your affectionate sister,
CICELY.
"You did ask her, of course," said Julian, handing Eurydice the letter;
"and as we are both acting in a thoroughly underhand way, perhaps you
will not mind repeating to me Stella's reply."
"At first she didn't answer at all," said Eurydice, slowly, "and then
when I asked her again she said; 'I'm not going to tell you anything at
all about Mr. Travers. I came here to tell you about Julian, only you
won't listen to me.' Then," said Eurydice, "she cried."
"Please don't tell me any more," said Julian, quickly, shading his eyes
with his hand. "I should be awfully obliged if you'd go. I think you've
said enough."
Eurydice also thought that she had said enough; so she returned with the
satisfaction of one who has accomplished a mission, on the rest of
Stella's pound.