This is going to be my last love-letter to you, Stella. I wonder if
you will know it is a love-letter. It won't sound particularly like
one. It's to tell you that I can't go through with our marriage. I
can't give you my reasons, and I can't face you without giving them
to you. You must try to take my word for it that I am doing what I
think best for both of us.
You see, I trust you to do what I want, though I know I am acting
in a way that you'll despise. If you will think of what it means
for me to act in such a way, you'll realize that I am pretty
certain that I am right.
You are the best friend I ever had, man or woman, and I know you
value my friendship, so that it seems uncommonly mean to take it
away from you; and yet I'm afraid I can't be satisfied with your
friendship.
It would honestly make me happier to hear that you were married;
but I couldn't meet you afterward, and if you don't marry, I
couldn't let you alone.
You see, I tried that plan when I didn't know you'd let me do
anything else, and it can't be said to have worked very well, can
it? It would be quite impossible now. There are two things I'd like
you to remember. One is, if you set out, as I think you did, to
heal a broken man, you've succeeded, and nothing can take away
from your success. You put in a new mainspring. I am going to work
now. Some day I'll finish the book, but not yet. The second thing
is something I want you to do for me. I know I have no right to ask
you! I'm only appealing to your mercy. Will you let my mother help
you a little? I know you won't let me, but you would have let me,
Stella. Think what that means to me--to know that you would have
taken my help, and that by freeing you I am also, in a sense,
deserting you. If you still want to make a man happier who has only
been a nuisance to you, you can't say I haven't shown you the way.
I should like to give you Ostrog, but I suppose he'd be out of
place in a town hall.
I'm not going to ask you to forgive me; for I'm not really sorry
for anything except that there wasn't more of it and I'm never
going to forget anything.
Good-by.
Your lover,
JULIAN.
Stella was in the middle of ironing the curtains when she received
Julian's letter. Everything else was ready for his visit except the
curtains.
Mrs. Waring was dressed. It had taken several hours, a needle and
cotton, and all the pins in the house, and now she was sitting in a
drawing-room which was tidier than any she had sat in since her early
married life. She thought that it looked a little bare.
Professor Waring was in the Museum. He had become so restless after
breakfast that it had seemed best to despatch him there, and retrieve
him after Julian arrived.
Eurydice had not asked Mr. Travers for a morning off; she had merely
conceded that she would allow Stella to arrange a subsequent meeting
with Julian on Sunday, if it was really necessary.
Eurydice kissed Stella tenderly before she left the house to go to the
town hall. She knew that she had saved her sister, but she foresaw for
the victim of salvation a few painful moments. Even a kindly Providence
may have its twinges of remorse.
Stella let the iron get cold while she was reading Julian's letter; but
when she had finished it, she heated the iron again and went on with the
curtains. They could not be hung up rough dried.
Mrs. Waring was relieved to hear that Julian was not coming. Stella told
her at once, while she was slipping the rings on the curtains, which she
had brought up-stairs. She added a little quickly, but in her ordinary
voice:
"And we aren't going to be married, after all."
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Waring, trying not to appear more relieved still.
"Then there won't have to be any new arrangements. Marriage is very
unreliable, too--it turns out so curiously unlike what it begins, and it
even begins unlike what one had expected. I often wish there could be
more mystical unions. I can't agree with dear Eurydice about the
drawback of Julian's being rich. We are told that money is the root of
all evil, but there is no doubt that it is more peaceful and refreshing
to have it, as it were, growing under one's hand; and, after all, evil
is only seeming. I think I'll just go up-stairs and take off these
constricting clothes, unless, dear, you'd like me to help you in any
way. You'll remember, won't you, that sensation is but the petal of a
flower?"
Stella said that she thought, if she had the step-ladder, she would be
all right.
The only moment of the day (it was curiously made up of moments
prolonged to seem like years) when Stella wasn't sure whether she was
really all right or not was when she heard Lady Verny's voice in the
hall. Lady Verny's voice was singularly like Julian's.
Something happened to Stella's heart when she heard it; it had an
impulse to get outside of her. She had to sit down on the top of the
stairs until her heart had gone back where it belonged.
The drawing-room had gone to pieces again. The kitten's saucer was in
the middle of the floor, and the plate-basket came half in and half out
of the sofa-cover. Lady Verny was looking at it with fascinated eyes.
She had never seen a plate-basket under a sofa-cover before. Mrs.
Waring, exhausted by her hours of dressing, had gone to lie down. So
there was only Stella. She came in a little waveringly, and looked at
Lady Verny without speaking.
Lady Verny shot a quick, penetrating glance at her, and then held out
her arms.
"My dear! what has he done? What has he done?" she murmured.
Stella led Lady Verny carefully away from the saucer of milk into the
only safe arm-chair; then she sat down on a footstool at her feet.
"I thought," she said in a very quiet voice, "that you'd come, but I
didn't think you'd come so soon. I don't know what he's done."
"It's all so extravagant and absurd," said Lady Verny, quickly, "and so
utterly unlike Julian! I have never known him to alter an arrangement in
his life, and as to breaking his word! I left him happier than I have
ever seen him. He'd been telling me that you insisted on my staying with
you after your marriage. I told him that I had always thought it a most
out-of-place and unsuitable plan, and that he couldn't have two women in
our respective positions in his house, and he laughed and said: 'Oh,
yes, I can. Stella has informed me that marrying me isn't a position;
it's to be looked on in the light of an intellectual convenience. You're
to run the house, and she's to run me. I've quite fallen in with it.' I
think that was the last thing he said, and when I came back, there was
his astounding letter to say that your marriage was impossible, and that
I was on no account to send him on your letters or to refer to you in
mine.
"He gave me his banker's address, and said that he'd see me later on,
and had started some intelligence work for the War Office. He was good
enough to add that I might go and see you if I liked. I really think he
must be mad, unless you can throw some light on the subject. A letter
came from you after he had gone."
Stella, who had been without any color at all, suddenly flushed.
"Ah," she said, "I'm glad he didn't read that before he went! I mean, if
he'd gone after reading it, I should have felt--" She put out her hands
with a curious little helpless gesture, but she did not say what she
would have felt.
"Can't you explain?" Lady Verny asked gravely. "Can't you explain
_anything_? You _were_ perfectly happy, weren't you? I haven't been a
blind, meddling, incompetent old idiot, have I?"
Stella shook her head.
"When he left me," she said, "he gave me this." She took it out of her
belt and handed it to Lady Verny; it was a check for two hundred pounds
inclosed in a piece of paper, on which was written, "Dearest, please!"
"I took it," said Stella.
Lady Verny was silent for a moment; then she said more gravely still:
"My dear, I think I ought to tell you something,--it is not fair not to
let you have every possible indication that there is,--but the day after
you left, while I was away, I hear from Thompson, who seemed to be
extremely upset by her, that a lady _did_ call to see Julian and she
would not give her name. Thompson says he thinks she was a foreigner.
"I do not know what Julian may have told you about his life, but I
myself am quite positive he would have asked no woman to marry him
unless he felt himself free from any possible entanglement. Still, there
it is: he went away after this person's visit."
For a moment it seemed to Stella that some inner citadel of security
within her had collapsed. She knew so little about men; she had nothing
but her instincts to guide her, and the memory of Eugénie Matisse's
evil, laughing eyes. She covered her face with her hands and shut out
every thought but Julian. It seemed to her as if she had never been so
alone with him before, as if in some strange, hidden way she was
plunging into the depths of his soul.
When she looked up she had regained her calm.
"No," she said; "I am quite sure of Julian. Perhaps some woman could
make him feel shaken--shaken about its being right to marry me. I can
believe that, if she was very cruel and clever and knew how to hurt him
most; but there is nothing else, or Julian would have told me."
Lady Verny gave a long sigh of relief.
"That is what I think myself," she said; "but I couldn't have tried to
persuade you of it. My dear, did Julian know that you had always loved
him?"
Stella shook her head.
"I thought he knew all that mattered," she explained. "I didn't tell him
anything else. You see, there was so very little time, and I was rather
cowardly, perhaps. I didn't want him just _at once_ to know that I had
loved him before he even knew that I existed."
"I see, I see," said Lady Verny. "But would you mind his knowing now? He
can't be allowed to behave in this extraordinary way, popping off like
a conjurer without so much as leaving a decent address behind him. I
intend to tell him precisely what I think of his behavior, and I hope
that you will do the same."
Stella turned round to face Lady Verny.
"No," she said firmly; "neither of us must do that. I don't know why
Julian has done this at all, but it is quite plain that he does not want
to be interfered with. He wishes to act alone, and I think he must act
alone. I shall not write to him or try to see him."
"But, my dear child," exclaimed Lady Verny, "how, if we enter into this
dreadful conspiracy of silence, can anything come right?"
"I don't know," said Stella, quietly; "but Julian let it go wrong quite
by himself, and I think it must come right, if it comes right at all, in
the same way. If it didn't, he would distrust it. I shouldn't--I should
be perfectly happy just to see him; but, then, you see, I _know_ it's
all right. Julian doesn't. Seeing me wouldn't make it so; it would
simply make him give in, and go on distrusting. We couldn't live like
that. You see, I don't _know_ what has happened; but I do know what he
wants, so I think I must do it."
"But you don't think this state of things is what he _wants_, do you?"
Lady Verny demanded. "I may of course be mistaken, but up till now I
have been able to judge fairly well what a man wanted of a woman when he
couldn't take his eyes off her face."
"He wants me more than that," said Stella, proudly. "I think he wants me
very nearly--not quite--as much as I want him. That's why I couldn't
make him take less than he wanted. To take me and not trust me would be
to take less. If we leave him quite alone for six months or a year,
perhaps, he'll have stopped shutting his mind up against his feelings.
It might be safer then to make an appeal to him; but I shouldn't like to
appeal to him. Still, I don't say I won't do anything you think right,
dear Lady Verny, if you want me to, to make him happier; only I must be
_sure_ that it will make him happier _first_. I know now that it
wouldn't."
"You're the most extraordinary creature!" said Lady Verny. "Of course I
always knew you were, but it's something to be so justified of one's
instincts. I'm not sure that I sha'n't do precisely what you say--for
quite different reasons. Julian will count on one of us disobeying his
injunctions, and he'll be perfectly exasperated not to have news of you.
Well, exasperation isn't going to do any man any harm; it'll end by
jerking him into some common-sense question, if nothing else will."
Stella smiled, but she shook her head.
"Please don't hope," she said under her breath.
"There's one thing," Lady Verny said after a short pause, "that I do ask
you to be sensible about. I can't take you abroad, as there hardly seems
at the present time any abroad to take you to, but I want you to come
and live with me. I think, after all this, I really rather need a
companion."
Stella hid her face in Lady Verny's lap.
"I can't," she whispered. "You're too like him."
Lady Verny said nothing at all for a moment; she looked about the room.
It was clean; for a London room it was quite clean, and Stella thought
she had hidden all the holes in the carpet. Lady Verny's ruthless,
practised eye took the faded, shabby little room to pieces and
reconstructed the rest of the dingy makeshift home from it. She knew
that Stella's room would be the worst of all.
"My dear," she said at last, "you are so very nearly a member of my
family that I think I may appeal to you about its honor. Are you going
to live like this and not let me help you? You are not strong enough to
work, and this folly of poor Julian's won't make you any stronger. Since
you can't live with me, won't you accept a little of what is really
yours?"
"Money?" asked Stella, looking up into Lady Verny's face. "I would if
you weren't his mother, because I love you; but I can't now. You see,
Julian's taken his honor away from me; he's left me only my own. I know
he'll think me cruel, and I'll never return what I did take. He'll think
perhaps I would use it, if I needed it, and that may make him happier;
but I mustn't take any more. I must be cruel."
"Yes, you're very cruel," said Lady Verny, kissing her. "Well, I sha'n't
bully you, for I wouldn't do it myself. It'll only make my heart ache in
a new way, and really, I'm so used to its aching that I oughtn't to
grumble at any fresh manifestation. As to Julian's heart, he's been so
extraordinarily silly that only the fact that folly is a sign of love
induces me to believe he's got one." She rose to her feet, with her arms
still about Stella. "I'm simply not to mention you at all?" she asked.
Stella shook her head. She clung to Lady Verny speechlessly, but without
tears.
"And when I see him next," Lady Verny asked a little dryly,--"and,
presumably, he'll send for me in about a fortnight,--he'll say, 'Well,
did she take the money'? What am I to answer to that?"
"Say," whispered Stella, "that she would have liked to take it, but she
couldn't."
"I could make up something a great deal crueller to say than that," said
Lady Verny, grimly. "However, I dare say you're right; it sounds so
precisely like you that it's bound to hurt him more than any gibe."
Stella burst into tears.
"Oh, don't! don't!" she sobbed. "You must--you must be kind to him! I
don't want anything in the world to hurt him."
"I know you don't," said Lady Verny, gently. "You little silly, I only
wanted to make you cry. It'll be easier if you cry a little."
Stella cried more than ever then, because Lady Verny was so terribly
like Julian.