The Second Fiddle Part 12

Stella wished for the first time that Julian were dead. She did not believe in a capricious or an impatient G.o.d, moved by well-timed pet.i.tions; but all her being absorbed itself into an unconscious prayer for Julian's peace.

She could not have told how long she had been there when she heard the sound of footsteps, strangely familiar footsteps, direct, regular, and swift. She looked up, to meet the grave, intent gaze of Mr. Leslie Travers.

Stella rubbed her eyes as if she had been asleep. Surely in a place of whispering silences, town clerks did not burst upon you except in dreams?

Of course Mr. Travers might live in one of these old, quiet houses, though it did not seem very likely to Stella. She thought he must live in some place where the houses looked as if they knew more what they were about, and did not brood over a deserted waterway

Seeing all their own mischance With a gla.s.sy countenance,

like that immortal gazer, the _Lady of Shalott_.

Mr. Travers did not pa.s.s Stella with his usual air of cutting through s.p.a.ce like a knife. He crossed the float gingerly, and asked firmly, but with kindness, if he might sit down.

Stella gave a helpless gesture of a.s.sent. She could not stop him, but he was inappropriate. The row of factory chimneys ceased to disguise themselves as towers; the float looked as if it knew suddenly how unsuitable it was for a winter afternoon's repose. The swans, approaching fatally near for the ideal, were very nearly black.

"Do you not find it damp here?" asked Mr. Travers.

Stella said:

"Yes, very"; and then, meeting his surprised eyes, she hastily corrected herself. "No, not at all." Then gave a little, helpless laugh. "Forgive me!" she said. "You surprised me so. Has anything gone wrong at the town hall?"

Mr. Travers did not immediately answer her question. He had never sat on a float before. Still, it was not this fact which silenced him. He had not been sure when he approached if Stella was crying or not. There was still something that looked suspiciously like the pathway of a tear upon the cheek next him, and though she was laughing now, it had not the sound of her usual laughter; it stirred in him a sense of tears.

"I think I shall confess at once," he said finally, "that I followed you. I wanted to talk to you without interruption. I might have called upon you at your home, of course, but I have not had the pleasure of meeting your family, and in this instance my business was with you."

Stella gave a faint sigh of relief. She was glad it was business. She was used to business with Mr. Travers. She was not used to pleasure with him, and she was not in the mood for new experiences.

"I shall be glad to talk over anything with you about which I can be of use," she said gently, "and I think this is a beautiful place to do it in."

"The rents," said Mr. Travers, glancing critically at the silent houses, "must be very low, necessarily low. I hope you do not often come here,"

he added after a pause. "It is the kind of place in which I should strongly suspect drains. We might mention it to the sanitary inspector and ask him for a report upon it."

"Oh, must we?" murmured Stella.

"Not if you would rather not," said Mr. Travers, unexpectedly. "In that case I would waive the question."

Stella glanced at him in alarm. Was Mr. Travers going mad from overstrain at the town hall? He must be very nearly mad to come and sit upon a float with his secretary on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and waive a question of drains.

"But that wouldn't be business," she said gravely.

"Yes, it would," said Mr. Travers, relentlessly. "It is my immediate business to please you."

Stella's alarm deepened; but it became solely for Mr. Travers. She did not mind if he was sane or not if only he refrained from saying anything that he would ultimately regret.

"I don't know whether you realize, Miss Waring," Mr. Travers continued, "that I am a very lonely man. I have no contemporary relatives. My father died when I was a young child. I lost my mother two years ago. My work has not entailed many friendships. I began office work very young, and it has to a great extent absorbed me. I think I should be afraid to say it to any one but you,--it would sound laughable,--but my chief attachment of late years has been to a cat."

It was curious that, though Mr. Travers had often been nervous of his secretary's humor, he understood that she would not laugh at him about his cat.

"Oh," she cried, "I hope it loves you as well. They won't sometimes, I know; you can pour devotion out on them, and they won't turn a hair. But when they do, it's so wonderfully rea.s.suring. Dogs will love almost any one, but cats discriminate. I do hope your cat discriminates toward you, Mr. Travers?"

"I think it was attached to me in its way," said Mr. Travers, clearing his throat. "It was an old cat, and now it is dead. I merely mention it in pa.s.sing."

"Yes, yes," said Stella, quickly. "But I'm so sorry! I hate to think you had to lose what you loved."

"You would," said Mr. Travers. "But the point I wish to make to you is that a man whose sole dependence is upon the attachment of a cat does not know much about human relationships. I fear I am exceedingly ignorant upon this subject. Until lately this had not particularly disturbed me. Now I should wish to have given it more consideration."

"But I think you have," said Stella, eagerly; "I mean I think you've changed lately about relationships. Now I think of it, I'm quite sure you have. I have always enjoyed my work with you, and you have never been inconsiderate to me. But I used to think people weren't very real to you, as if you wanted to hurry through them and stick them on a neat, tight file, like the letters, according to their alphabetical order. But now I know you're not like that. Even if you hadn't told me about the cat I should have known it."

"Thank you," said Mr. Travers. "Thank you very much."

For a while he said nothing at all, and Stella wondered if that was all he wanted. She hoped it was all he wanted. Then he turned and looked down at her.

"I have formed an attachment now, Miss Waring," he said, "and I am in a suitable position to carry it out. You have been the best secretary a man ever had. Could you undertake to become my wife?"

Stella bowed her head. She had come here to think about Julian, but she had not been able to think about him for very long. She did not think about him at all now. She thought only about Mr. Travers. She was so sorry for him that she could not look at him. What compensation was there for what she had not got to give him, and in what mad directions does not pity sometimes drive? For a moment she felt as if she could not say "No" to him; but to say "Yes" would make nothing any easier, for after she had said "Yes" she would have nothing more to give.

There is seldom any disastrous situation in which there is not something that can be saved. Stella saw in a flash what she might still save out of it. She could save Mr. Travers's pride at the cost of hers. She was a very proud and a very reticent woman; she would take the deepest thing in her heart and show it to Mr. Travers that he might not feel ashamed at having shown her his own.

"I can't," she said quickly, slipping her small, firm hand over his; "not because it isn't beautiful of you. It is, of course; it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever known, because you know nothing about me, and I'm so glad I'm not what you would really like if you did know me. Remember that afterward."

"Excuse me," interrupted Mr. Travers, dryly; "I am the best judge of what I like."

"I wonder if you really are," said Stella, with a little gasp, as if she had been running. "I wonder if I really am myself. But we both think we are, don't we? We can't help that--and the very same thing has happened to us both: we've seen and wanted a little--something that wouldn't do--that wouldn't do at all for either of us ever. If you _had_ to like somebody that wouldn't do, I think I'm glad you came to me, because, you see, I know what it feels like. I can be sorry and proud and glad you've given it to me, and then we need never talk about it any more."

Mr. Travers looked straight in front of him. Stella had not withdrawn her hand; but Mr. Travers pressed it, and laid it down reverentially between them. He would never forget that he had held it, but to continue to hold it until she had accepted him would have seemed to Mr. Travers a false position.

"There is another point to which I should like to draw your attention,"

he said after a slight pause. "Marriage does not necessarily imply any feeling of an intense nature by both parties. I wish to offer you security and companionship. As I told you before, I am a lonely man; I could be content with very little. I have noticed that when you come into a room it makes a difference to me."

"Don't make me cry!" said Stella, suddenly, and then she did cry a little, a nervous flurry of tears that shook her for a brief moment and left her laughing at the consternation in his face.

"You see how silly I am!" she said. "But however silly, I'm not a cheat.

You offer me everything. I couldn't take it and not offer you everything back. To me marriage means everything. It isn't only--is it?--a perpetual companionship, though when you think of it, that's tremendous,--almost all the other companionships of life are intermittent, but it's the building up of fresh life out of a single love."

Mr. Travers looked away. He was surprised that Stella had not shocked him. The idea of any woman mentioning the existence of a child until she had a child might have shocked him; but Stella failed to move his sense of propriety. It even struck him that marriage would be less inclined to lapse into the sordid and irregular struggles of his experience if it was based upon so plain a foundation. He looked away because he felt that now he could not change her.

Stella wished that they were in a house. It struck her that a room would give more of the advantages of a retreat to Mr. Travers. She was very anxious to make his retreat easy for him.

"Would you do me a tremendous service?" she asked gently.

He turned quickly to face her.

"That is what I should like to do you," he said. But he looked at her a little suspiciously, for he was not sure that the service Stella asked wouldn't, after all, be only some new way of helping him.

"You said the other day," she said, meeting his eyes with unswerving candor, "that I might have extra help if I wanted it. I do want very much to find some work for my sister, Eurydice. She is very clever; cleverer than I am a great deal, only in a different way. She used to write books, but that did not pay her very well, and when the war came, she went into the city and worked for a secretarial diploma. I think she would be of use to you, if you would go slowly with her and make allowances for her different ways of being clever. Would you like to help her?"

Mr. Travers hesitated. Then he stood up and held out his hand to her.