It was the hour of the day that Julian liked least. Until four o'clock
in the afternoon his mind was protected by blinkers; he saw the road
ahead of him, but the unmerciful vastness of the world was hidden from
him. He was thankful that he could not see it, because it was possessed
by Stella.
He could keep her out of his work; but there was no other subject she
left untouched, no prospect that was not penetrated with her presence,
no moment of his consciousness that she did not ruthlessly share.
He knew when he left her that he must be prepared for a sharp wrench and
an unforgetable loss; what he had not foreseen was that the wrench would
be continuous, and that he would be confronted by her presence at every
turn.
Women's faces had haunted him before, and he had known what it was to be
maddened by the sudden cessation of an intense relationship; but that
was different. He could not remember Stella's face; he had no visual
impression of her physical presence; he had simply lost the center of
his thoughts. He felt as if he were living in a nightmare in which one
tries to cross the ocean without a ticket.
He was perpetually starting lines of thought which were not destined to
arrive. For the first few weeks it was almost easier; he felt the
immediate relief which comes from all decisive action, and he was able
to believe that he was angry with Stella. She had obeyed him implicitly
by not writing, and his mother never mentioned her except for that worst
moment of all when she gave him Stella's words, without comment. "She
would like to take the money, but she cannot do it." This fed his anger.
"If I'd been that fellow Travers, I suppose she'd have taken it right
enough," he said to himself, bitterly, and without the slightest
conviction. He said nothing at all to his mother. Julian knew why Stella
had not taken the money. It was because she had not consented to what he
had done; he had forced her will. Of all her remembered words, the ones
that remained most steadily in his mind were: "You are not only
sacrificing yourself; you are sacrificing me. I give you no such right."
That was her infernal woman's casuistry. He had a perfect right to save
her. He was doing what a man of honor ought to do, freeing a woman he
loved from an incalculable burden. It was no use Stella's saying she
ought to have a choice,--pity had loaded her dice,--and it was sheer
nonsense to accuse him of pride. He hadn't any. He'd consented to take
her till he found she had a decent marriage at her feet. He couldn't
have done anything else then but give her up. The greatest scoundrel
unhung wouldn't have done anything else. It relieved Julian to compare
himself to this illusory and self-righteous personage.
As to facing Stella with it, which he supposed was her fantastic claim,
it only showed what a child she was and how little Stella knew about the
world or men. There were things you couldn't tell a woman. Stella was
too confoundedly innocent.
Why should he put them both to a scene of absolute torture? Surely he
had endured enough. He wasn't a coward, but to meet her eyes and go
against her was rather more than he could undertake, knocked about as he
was by every kind of beastly helplessness. He fell back upon self-pity
as upon an ally; it helped him to obscure Stella's point of view. She
ought to have realized what it would make him suffer; and she didn't, or
she would have taken the money. He did well, he assured himself, to be
angry; everything in life had failed him. Stella had failed him. But at
this point his prevailing sanity shook him into laughter. He could still
laugh at the idea of Stella's having failed him.
You do not fail people because you refuse to release them from acting up
to the standard you had expected of them; you fail them when you expect
less of them than they can give you. When Julian had faced this fact
squarely he ceased to beat about the bush of his vanity. He confessed to
himself that he was a coward not to have had it out with Stella. But he
acquiesced in this spiritual defeat; he assured himself that there were
situations in life when for the sake of what you loved you had to be a
coward. Of course it was for Stella's sake; a man, he argued, doesn't
lie down on a rack because he likes it.
He wished he could have gone on being angry with Stella, because when he
stopped being angry he became frightened.
He was haunted by the fear of Stella's poverty. He didn't know anything
about poverty except that it was disagreeable and a long way off. He had
a general theory that people who were very poor were either used to it
or might have helped it; but this general theory broke like a bubble at
the touch of a special instance.
The worst of it was that Stella had not really told him anything about
her life. He knew that her father was a well-known Egyptologist, that
her mother had various odd ethical beliefs, and he knew all that he
wanted to know about Eurydice. But of Stella's actual life, of its
burdens and its cares, what had she told him? That there weren't any
bells in the house and that the clocks didn't go.
This showed bad management and explained her unpunctuality, but it
explained nothing more. It did not tell Julian how poor she was, or if
she was properly looked after when she came home from work.
If she married Travers, she would have about nine hundred a year. Julian
had made investigations into the income of metropolitan town clerks.
He supposed that people could just manage on this restricted sum, with
economy; but there seemed no reliable statistics about the incomes of
famous Egyptologists. Why hadn't he asked Stella? She ought to have told
him without being asked. He tried being angry with her for her
secretiveness, but it hurt him, so he gave it up. He knew she would have
told him if he had asked her.
Julian made himself a nuisance at the office for which he worked on the
subject of pay for woman clerks. It relieved him a little, but not much.
Logically he ought to have felt only his own pain, which he could have
stood; he had made Stella safe by it. But he had deserted her; he
couldn't get this out of his head. He kept saying to himself, "If she's
in any trouble, why doesn't she go to Travers?" But he couldn't believe
that Stella would ever go to Travers.
The lighting restrictions--it was November, and the evening
thoroughfares were as dark as tunnels--unnerved him. Stella might get
run over; she was certain to be hopelessly absent-minded in traffic, and
would always be the last person to get on to a crowded bus.
It was six months since he had broken off their engagement. Julian did
not think it could possibly remind Stella of him if he sent her,
addressed by a shop assistant, a flash-light lamp for carrying about the
streets. She wouldn't send back a thing as small as a torch-lamp, even
if she did dislike anonymous presents. He was justified in this
conjecture. Stella kept the lamp, but she never had a moment's doubt as
to whom it came from; if it had had "Julian" engraved on it she couldn't
have been surer.
Julian always drove to his club at four o'clock, so that he didn't have
to take his tea alone. He didn't wish to talk to anybody, but he liked
being disturbed. Then he played bridge till dinner, dined at the club,
and went back to his rooms, where he worked till midnight. This made
everything quite possible except when he couldn't sleep.
He sat in an alcove, by a large, polished window of the club. It was
still light enough to see the faces of the passers-by, to watch the
motor-buses lurching through the traffic like steam tugs on a river, and
the shadows creeping up from Westminster till they filled the green park
with the chill gravity of evening.
A taxi drew up opposite to the club, and a man got out of it. There was
nothing particularly noticeable about the man except that he was very
neatly dressed. Julian took an instant and most unreasonable dislike to
him. He said under his breath, "Why isn't the fellow in khaki?"
The man paid the driver what was presumably, from the scowl he received
in return, his exact fare. Then he prepared to enter the club. He did
not look in the least like any of the men who belonged to Julian's club.
A moment later the waiter brought to Julian a card with "Mr. Leslie
Travers" engraved upon it.
"Confound his impudence," was Julian's immediate thought. "Why on earth
should I see the fellow?" Then he realized that he was being angry
simply because Mr. Travers had probably seen Stella.
Julian instantly rejected the idea that Stella had sent Mr. Travers to
see him; she wouldn't have done that. He wasn't in any way obliged to
receive him; still, there was just the off chance that he might hear
something about Stella if he did. Julian would rather have heard
something about Stella from a condemned murderer; but as Providence had
not provided him with this source of information, he decided to see the
town clerk instead. You could say what you liked to a man if he happened
to annoy you, and Julian rather hoped that Mr. Travers would give him
this opportunity.
Mr. Travers entered briskly and without embarrassment. His official
position had caused him to feel on rather more than an equality with the
people he was likely to meet. He did not think that Sir Julian Verny was
his equal.
Mr. Travers considered all members of the aristocracy loafers. Even when
they worked, they did it, as it were, on their luck. They had had none
of the inconveniences and resulting competence of having climbed from
the bottom of the ladder to the top by their own unaided efforts.
There were three or four other men in the room when he entered it, but
Mr. Travers picked out Julian in an instant. Their eyes met, and neither
of them looked away from the other. Julian said stiffly: "Sit down,
won't you? What will you take--a whisky and soda?"
"Thanks," said Mr. Travers, drawing up a chair opposite Julian and
placing his hat and gloves carefully on the floor beside him. "I do not
drink alcohol in between meals, but I should like a little aërated
water."
Julian stared at him fixedly. This was the man Eurydice had compared
with Napoleon, to the latter's disadvantage.
Mr. Travers refused a cigar, and sat in an arm-chair as if there were a
desk in front of him. It annoyed Julian even to look at him.
"I have no doubt," said Mr. Travers, "that you are wondering why I
ventured to ask you for this interview."
"I'm afraid I am, rather," Julian observed, with hostile politeness. "I
know your name, of course."
"Exactly," said Mr. Travers, as if Julian had presented him with a
valuable concession greatly to his advantage. "I had counted upon that
fact to approach you directly and without correspondence. One should
avoid black and white, I think, when it is possible, in dealing with
personal matters."
"I am not aware," said Julian, coldly, "that there are any personal
matters between us to discuss."
"I dare say not," replied Mr. Travers, blandly, placing the tips of his
fingers slowly together. "You may have observed, Sir Julian, that
coincidences bring very unlikely people together at times. I admit that
they have done so in this instance."
"What for?" asked Julian, succinctly. He found that he disliked Mr.
Travers quite as much as he intended to dislike him, and he despised him
more.
"An injustice has been brought to my notice," said Mr. Travers, slowly
and impressively. He was not in the least flurried by Julian's hostile
manner, which he considered was due to an insufficient business
education; it only made him more careful as to his own. "I could not
overlook it, and as it directly concerns you, Sir Julian, I am prepared
to make a statement to you on the subject."
"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you," said Julian; "but I trust you will
make the statement as short and as little personal as possible."
"Speed," Mr. Travers said reprovingly, "is by no means an assistance in
elucidating personal problems; and I may add, Sir Julian, that it is at
least as painful for me as for you, to touch upon personal matters with
a stranger."
"The fact remains," said Julian, impatiently, "that you're doing it, and
I'm not. Go on!"
Mr. Travers frowned. Town clerks are not as a rule ordered to go on.
Even their mayors treat them with municipal hesitancy. Still, he went
on. Julian's eyes held him as in a vice.
"You have probably heard my name," Mr. Travers began, "from the elder
Miss Waring." Julian nodded. "She was for two years and a half my
secretary. I may say that she was the most efficient secretary I have
ever had. There have been, I think, few instances in any office where
the work between a man and woman was more impersonal or more
satisfactory. It is due to the elder Miss Waring that I should tell you
this. It was in fact entirely due to her, for I found myself unable to
continue it. There was a lapse on my part. Miss Waring was consideration
itself in her way of meeting this--er--lapse; but she unconditionally
refused me."
Julian drew a quick breath, and turned his eyes away from Mr. Travers.
"At the same time," Mr. Travers continued, "she gave me to understand,
in order, I fancy, to palliate my error of judgment, that her affections
were engaged elsewhere."
Julian could not speak. His pride had him by the throat. He could not
tell Mr. Travers to go on now, although he felt as if his life depended
on it.
"There are one or two points which I put together, at a later date," Mr.
Travers continued, after a slight pause, "and by which I was able to
connect Miss Waring's statement with her subsequent actions. She is, if
I may say so, a woman who acts logically. You were the man upon whom her
affections were placed, Sir Julian, and that was her only reason for
accepting your proposal of marriage."
Julian stared straight in front of him. It seemed to him as if he heard
again the music of Chaliapine--the unconquerable music of souls that
have outlasted their defeat. He lost the sound of Mr. Travers's
punctilious, carefully lowered voice. When he heard it again, Mr.
Travers was saying:
"It came to my knowledge through an interview with the younger Miss
Waring, who has also become one of our staff, that she had regrettably
misinformed you as to her sister's point of view. The younger Miss
Waring acts at times impetuously and without judgment, but she had no
intention whatever of harming her sister. She has been deeply anxious
about her for the last few months, and she at length communicated her
anxiety to me."
"Anxious," exclaimed Julian, sharply. "What the devil's she anxious
about?"
"Her sister's state of health is not at all what it should be," Mr.
Travers said gravely. "She looks weak and thin, and she occasionally
forgets things. This is a most unusual and serious sign in a woman of
her capacity."
"Damn her capacity!" said Julian savagely. "Why on earth couldn't you
stop her working?"
"It is not in my province to stop people earning their daily bread,"
said Mr. Travers, coldly, "and I have never discussed this or any other
private question with the elder Miss Waring since her return. When she
came back to the town hall she refused to displace her sister, who had
undertaken her former work and went into the surveyor's office."
"All right, all right," said Julian, hastily. "I dare say you couldn't
have helped it; but how on earth did you find out if you've never talked
to Miss Waring, what had happened?"
"I investigated the matter," said Mr. Travers, "with the younger Miss
Waring. She confessed to me, under some slight pressure on my part, her
very mistaken conclusions, and the action she had based upon them. I
sent her at once, without mentioning what course of action I had decided
to take myself, to her sister."
"You shouldn't have done that," said Julian, with the singular injustice
Mr. Travers had previously noted and disliked in members of the upper
classes. "There wasn't any need to give Eurydice away to her; I could
have managed without that."
"You forget," said Mr. Travers, steadily, "the younger Miss Waring had
forfeited her sister's confidence; it would have been impossible to
avoid clearing up the situation by bringing all the facts to light. It
will not, I feel sure, cause permanent ill feeling between the two
sisters."
Julian gave a long, curious sigh. His relief was so intense that he
could hardly believe in it; but he could believe, not without
reluctance, in the hand that had set him free. It had taken a town clerk
to show him where he stood.
"It would be difficult," he began--"By Jove! it's impossible to express
thanks for this kind of thing! You won't expect it, perhaps, and I know
of course, you didn't do it for me. For all that, I'm not ungrateful.
I--well--I think you're more of a man than I am, Travers."
"Not at all, Sir Julian," said Mr. Travers, who privately felt surprised
that there should be any doubt upon the matter. "Any one would have
done precisely the same who had the good fortune to know the elder Miss
Waring."
"Perhaps they would," said Julian, smiling, "or, you might add, the
misfortune to come across the erratic proceedings of the younger one."
Mr. Travers looked graver still.
"There I cannot agree with you," he said quietly. "Perhaps I should have
mentioned the matter before, but it scarcely seemed germane to the
occasion; I am about to marry Miss Eurydice."
A vivid memory of Eurydice shot through Julian's mind. He saw her
advancing down the grass path arrayed in the purple garment, with the
scarlet hat and the dangling pomegranates; and the thought of her in
conjunction with the town clerk was too much for him. Laughter seized
him uncontrollably and shook him. He flung back his head and roared with
laughter, and the graver and more disapproving Mr. Travers looked, the
more helplessly and shamelessly Julian laughed.
"I'm most frightfully sorry," he gasped, "but I can't help it. Are you
sure you're going to marry her? I mean, _must_ you?"
Mr. Travers took his hat and gloves carefully in his hand.
"This is not a subject I care to discuss with you, Sir Julian," he said,
with dignity, "nor is your tone a suitable one in which to refer to a
lady. A man of my type does not shilly-shally on the question of
matrimony; either he is affianced or he is _not_. I have already told
you that I am. You may have some excuse for misjudging the younger Miss
Waring; but there can be no excuse whatever for your flippant manner of
referring to our marriage. It is most uncalled for. I might say
offensive."
A spasm of returning laughter threatened Julian again, but he succeeded
in controlling it.
"My dear Travers," he said, holding out his hand, "please don't go away
with a grievance. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself as it is, and more
grateful to you than I can possibly express. You'll forgive me for not
getting up, won't you? And try to overlook my bad manners."
It was the first time during the interview that Mr. Travers realized
Julian's disabilities, but they did not make him feel more lenient.
Mr. Travers liked an invalid to behave as if he were an invalid, and he
thought that a man in Julian's position should not indulge in unseemly
mirth.
"Pray don't get up," he said coldly. "I am bound to accept your apology,
of course, though I must confess I think your laughter very ill timed."
Julian took this rebuke with extraordinary humility. He insisted on
giving Mr. Travers an unnecessarily cordial hand-shake, and invited him
to drop in again at some hour when he would have a drink.
Mr. Travers waived aside this suggestion, he did not wish to continue
Julian's acquaintance and he disapproved of Julian's club. The large
luxurious lounges, the silent obsequious servants and the sprinkling of
indolent men swallowed up in soft arm-chairs, bore out Mr. Travers's
opinion of the higher classes. They were drones--whether they were in
khaki or not.
Mr. Travers sighed heavily as he crossed the threshold. "She was a
perfect business woman," he said to himself bitterly, "nipped in the
bud."
For the first time since Mr. Travers had known her, he found himself
doubting the judgment of the elder Miss Waring.