The Second Fiddle Part 18

"I don't dislike her," said Julian. "I don't think her behavior matters.

She isn't at all a bother. I rather like her being so awfully little a woman; it's restful. Half the time I don't notice if she's in the room or not."

"And the other half of the time?" Lady Verny asked, with apparent carelessness.

"Oh, the other half of the time," said Julian, with a little, twisted smile, "I quite appreciate the fact that she is. Especially when you've taken the trouble to dress her as you did last night."

"I had to see what she looked like," Lady Verny explained defensively.

"I think, if you want her to stay in this house," said Julian, dryly, "you'd better let her look as little like that again as possible. I might have tolerated a secretary if I had wanted to write a book; but I'd tolerate no approach to a picture. She can go and be picturesque at the town hall. My artistic sense has already been satisfied up to the brim. How did you get her to take the clothes she had on last night?"

"I told her," said Lady Verny, blushing, "that I had the materials by me, and couldn't possibly use them, as I was too old for light colors, and Girton could make her a simple little dress. And then I stood over Girton. As a matter of fact, I _did_ send for the green jade comb and the shoes and stockings."

"You seem to me," said Julian, "to have entered most light-heartedly upon a career of crime and deceit unusual at your age. I don't wonder that you blush for it."

"It wasn't only you, Julian," Lady Verny pleaded. "I did want to help the girl. I can't bear public offices for gentlewomen. It's so unsuitable!"

"Most," agreed Julian. "But, my dear mother, this is a world in which the unsuitable holds an almost perfect sway, a fact which your usual good sense seldom overlooks."

"You don't know," said Lady Verny, earnestly, "how even a bad patch of ground facing north _can_ improve with cultivation."

"Do what you like with the north side of the garden," replied Julian, "do even what you like with the apparently malleable Miss Waring; but please don't try the gardening habit any more on me."

Lady Verny sighed. Julian looked as inexpressive and immovable as a stone crusader.

Lady Verny was a patient woman, and she knew that, once seed is dropped, you must leave it alone.

She had learned to abstain from all the little labors of love which are its only consolations. From the first she had realized that the things she longed to do for Julian he preferred to have done for him by a servant.

She had accepted his preferences as the only outlet of her emotions; but when she saw he was fast approaching the place where nothing is left but dislikes, she made an effort to dislodge him. She was not sure, but she thought that she had failed. Without speaking again, she went back to the garden and did a little more digging before lunch. The earth was more malleable than Julian; digging altered it.

If you have never been able to buy any clothes except those which you could afford, none of them having any direct relation to the other, but merely replacing garments incapable of further use, to be dressed exactly as you should be is to obtain a new consciousness. It was not really Stella who looked with curious eyes at herself in a long mirror beneath the skilful hands of Girton. It was some hidden creature of triumphant youth with a curious, heady thirst for admiration. She gazed at herself with alien eyes.

"It's like an olive-tree," she said dreamily to Girton, "a silvery gray olive-tree growing in the South."

"I dare say, Miss," said Girton; "but if you was to remember when you sit down just to bring your skirts a trifle forward, it would sit better."

"Yes, Girton," said Stella, submissively. But the submission was only skin-deep. She knew that whatever she did, she couldn't go far wrong; her dress wouldn't let her. It gave her a freedom beyond the range of conduct. People whose clothes fit them, as its sheath of green fits a lily of the valley, become independent of their souls.

Julian's eyes had met hers last night with a perfectly different expression in them. He was too polite to look surprised, but he looked as soon as it was convenient, again.

Usually he looked at Stella as if he wanted to be nice to her, but last night for the first time he had looked as if he wished Stella to think him nice. She had had to hold her head up because of the jade comb.

It wouldn't matter how either of them looked now, as she was going away so soon; but she was glad that for once he had noticed her, even if his notice was inspired only by the green dress.

Julian did not appear at dinner; it was the first time since Stella's arrival that this had happened.

"He's had a bad day," Lady Verny explained. "He will get about more than he ought. It's a great strain on him, and then he suffers from fatigue and misery--not pain, exactly. I don't think he would mind that so much, but it makes him feel very helpless. He wants his chess though, if you don't mind going into his library and playing with him."

Julian was sitting up in his arm-chair when Stella joined him. His back was to the light, and the chess-board in front of him.

His face was gray and haggard, but there was a dogged spark of light in his eyes, as if he was amused at something.

"Thanks tremendously for coming in to cheer me up," he said quickly.

"You see, I've dispensed with Ostrog for the evening, to prevent further comparison between us. D'you mind telling me why you didn't let me know this morning that, if I wrote a book, you'd work for me?"

Stella flushed, and let her jade comb sink beneath its level.

"If you didn't want to write the book," she said, "why should you want a secretary?"

"It didn't occur to you, I suppose," Sir Julian asked, "that if I wanted the secretary, I might wish to write the book?"

"What has Lady Verny said to you?" Stella demanded, lifting her head suddenly, and looking straight across at him.

"Nothing that need make you at all fierce," Julian replied, with amus.e.m.e.nt. "She said you were going back to the town hall next week, and I said I thought it was a pity. You don't seem to me in the least fitted for a town hall. I've no doubt you can do incredible things with drains, but I fear I have a selfish preference for your playing chess with me.

My mother added that it was my fault; you were prepared, if I wished to write a book, to see me through it."

"Yes," said Stella, defensively, "I was prepared, if I thought you wanted it."

"I suppose you and my mother thought it would be good for me, didn't you?" asked Julian, suavely. "I have an idea that you had concocted a treacherous underground plot."

"We--I--well, if you'd _liked_ it, it might have been good for you,"

Stella admitted.

"Most immoral," said Julian, dryly, "to try to do good to me behind my back, wasn't it? You see, I dislike being done good to; I happen very particularly to dislike it, and above all things I dislike it being done without my knowledge."

"Yes," said Stella, humbly. "So do I; I see that now. It was silly and interfering. Only, if you _had_ been interested--"

"I wasn't in the least interested," said Julian, implacably, "but I'm glad you agree about your moral obliquity. My mother, of course, was worse; but there is no criminal so deep seated in her career as a woman under the sway of the maternal instinct. One allows for that. And now, Miss Waring, since neither of us likes being done good to, and since it's bad for you to go back to the town hall, and worse for me to remain unemployed, shall we pool this shocking state of things and write the book together?"

"Oh!" cried Stella with a little gasp. "But are you sure you want to?"

Julian laughed.

"I may be politer than Ostrog," he said, "but I a.s.sure you that, like him, unless reduced by force, I never do what I don't want to."

"And you haven't been reduced?" Stella asked a little doubtfully.

"Well," said Julian, beginning to place his chessmen, "I don't think so; do you? Where was the force?"

Stella could not answer this question, and Lady Verny, who might have been capable of answering it, was up-stairs.

CHAPTER XXI

Stella found that there were several Julians. The first one she knew quite well; he only wanted to be left alone. She dealt quite simply with him, as if he were Mr. Travers before Mr. Travers was human.