The Second Fiddle Part 22

"I should have broken it off directly," said Stella, turning to go--"directly I found out--"

"Found out what?" asked Julian.

"That you were nothing but a cold-blooded tease!" cried Stella over her shoulder.

"You perfect darling!" said Julian under his breath. "By Jove! that was a narrow squeak!"

CHAPTER XXIII

It puzzled Stella extremely that she found herself unable to say, "What is it that you want, Julian?" She knew that there was something that he wanted, and there was nothing that she would dream of denying him. What, therefore, could be simpler than asking him? And yet she did not want to ask him.

She began by trying hard to understand what it was that he had told her above the bluebell wood, because she thought if she discovered what he wanted then, the rest would follow. He had wanted a particular kind of help from her; that was plain. It had something to do with her being a woman; that was plainer. But was it to his advantage or to his disadvantage that she was a woman? Ought she to suppress the fact or build on it? And how could she build on it or suppress it when she never felt in the least like anything else but a woman?

Cicely used to say that the only safe way with men was never to be nice to them; but Stella had always thought any risk was better than such a surly plan. Besides, Julian couldn't mean that. He liked her to be nice to him. She saw quite plainly that he liked her to be nice to him.

Unfortunately, Julian had taken for granted in Stella a certain experience of life, and Stella had never had any such experience. She had never once recognized fancy in the eyes of any man. As for love, it belonged solely to her dreams; and the dreams of a woman of twenty-eight, unhara.s.sed by fact, are singularly unreliable. She thought of Mr. Travers, but he did not count. She had never been able to realize what he had felt for her. Her relation to him was as formal, despite his one singular lapse, as that of a pa.s.senger to a ticket-collector. She had nothing to go on but her dreams.

In her very early youth she had selected for heroes two or three characters from real life. They were Cardinal Newman, Sh.e.l.ley, and General Gordon. Later, on account of a difference in her religious opinions, she had replaced the Cardinal by Charles Lamb. None of these characters was in the least like Julian.

One had apparently no experience of women, the other two had sisters, and Sh.e.l.ley's expression of love was vague and might be said to be misleading.

She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, That I beheld her not.

Life had unfortunately refused to meet Sh.e.l.ley on the same terms, and difficulties had ensued, but it was this impracticable side of him that Stella had accepted. She had skipped Harriet, and landed on "Epipsychidion." Love was to her "a green and golden immortality." She was not disturbed by it, because the deepest experiences of life do not disturb us. What disturbs us is that which calls us away from them.

It made it easier to wait to find out what Julian wanted that he was happier with her. He was hardly ever impersonal or cold now, and he sometimes made reasons to be with her that had nothing to do with their work.

It was June, and the daffodils had gone, but there were harebells and blue b.u.t.terflies upon the downs, and in the hedges wild roses and Star of Bethlehem. Lady Verny spent all her time in the garden. She said the slugs alone took hours. They were supposed by the uninitiated to be slow, but express trains could hardly do more damage in less time. So Stella and Ostrog took their walks alone, and were frequently intercepted by Julian on their return.

Julian, who ought to have known better, thought that the situation might go on indefinitely, and Stella did not know that there was any situation; she knew only that she was in a new world. There was sorrow outside it, there was sorrow even in her heart for those outside it; but through all sorrow was this unswerving, direct experience of joy. She would have liked to share it with Julian, but she thought it was all her own, and that what he liked about her--since he liked something--was her ability to live beyond the margin of her personal delight. The color of it was in her eyes, and the strength of it at her heart; but she never let it interfere with Julian. She was simply a companion with a hidden treasure. She sometimes thought that having it made her a better companion; but even of this she was not sure.

It made her a little nervous taking Ostrog out alone, but she always took the lead with him, and slipped it on him if a living creature appeared on the horizon. There were some living creatures he didn't mind, but you couldn't be sure which.

One evening she was tired and forgot him. There was a wonderful sunset.

She stood to watch it in a hollow of the downs where she was waiting for Julian. The soft, gray lines rose up on each side of her, immemorial, inalterable lines of gentle land. The air was as transparently clear as water, and hushed with evening. Far below her, where the small church steeple sprang, she saw the swallows cutting V-shaped figures to and fro above the shining elms.

For a long time she heard no sound, and then, out of the stillness, came a faint and hollow boom. Far away across the placid shapes of little hills, over the threatened seas, the guns sounded from France--the dim, intolerable ghosts of war.

Ostrog, impatient of her stillness, bounded to the edge of the hollow and challenged the strange murmur to the echo. He was answered immediately. A sheep-dog shot up over the curve of the down. Ostrog was at his throat in an instant.

There was a momentary recoil for a fresh onslaught, and then the shrieks of the preliminary tussle changed into the full-throated growl of combat. There was every prospect that one or other of them would be dead before their jaws unlocked.

Stella hovered above them in frantic uncertainty. She was helpless till she saw that there was no other help. The sheep-dog had had enough; a sudden scream of pain stung her into action. She seized Ostrog's hind leg and twisted it sharply from under him.

At the moment she did so she heard Julian's voice:

"Wait! For G.o.d's sake, let go!"

But she could not wait; the sheep-dog was having the life squeezed out of him. She tugged and twisted again. Ostrog's grip slackened, he flung a snap at her across his shoulder, and then, losing his balance, turned on her in a flash. She guarded her head, but his teeth struck at her shoulder. She felt herself thrust back by his weight, saw his red jaws open for a fresh spring, and then Julian's crutch descended sharply on Ostrog's head. Ostrog dropped like a stone, the bob-tailed sheep-dog crawled safely away, and Stella found herself in Julian's arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She tugged and twisted again]

"Dearest, sure you're not hurt? Sure?" he implored breathlessly, and then she knew what his eyes asked her, they were so near her own and so intent; and while her lips said, "Sure, Julian," she knew her own eyes answered them.

He drew her close to his heart and kissed her again and again.

The idea of making any resistance to him never occurred to Stella.

Nothing that Julian asked of her could seem strange. She only wondered, if that was what he wanted, why he had not done it before.

He put her away from him almost roughly.

"There," he said, "I swore I'd never touch you! And I have! I'm a brute and a blackguard. Try and believe I'll never do it again. Promise you won't leave me? Promise you'll forgive me? I was scared out of my wits, and that's a fact. D' you think you can forgive me, Stella?"

"But what have I to forgive?" Stella asked. "I let you kiss me."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Julian, half laughing, "you are an honest woman!

Well, if you did, you mustn't 'let me' again, that's all. Ostrog, you wretch, lie down! You ought to have a sound thrashing. I'd have shot you if you'd hurt her; but as I've rather scored over the transaction, I'll let you off."

Stella looked at Julian thoughtfully.

"Why mustn't I let you again?" she inquired, "if that is what you want?"

Julian, still laughing, but half vexed, looked at her.

"Look here," he said, "didn't I tell you you'd got to help me? I can't very well keep you here and behave to you like that, can I?"

Stella considered for a moment, then she said quietly, "Were you flirting with me, Julian?"

"I wish to G.o.d I was!" said Julian, savagely. "If I could get out of it as easily as that, d'you suppose I should have been such a fool as not to have tried?"

"I don't think you would have liked me to despise you," said Stella, gently. "You see, if you had given me nothing when I was giving you all I had, I should have despised you."

Julian stared at her. She was obviously speaking the truth, but in his heart he knew that if she had loved him and he had flirted with her, he would have expected her to be the one to be despised.

He put out his hand to her and then drew it back sharply.

"No, I'm hanged if I'll touch you," he said under his breath. "I love you all right,--you needn't despise me for that,--but telling you of it's different. I was deadly afraid you'd see; any other woman would have seen. I've held on to myself for all I was worth, but it hasn't been the least good, really. I suppose I've got to be honest about it: I can't keep you with me, darling; you'll have to go. It makes it a million times worse your caring, but it makes it better, too."

"I don't see why it should be worse at all," said Stella, calmly. "If we both care, and care really, I don't see that anything can be even bad."

Julian pulled up pieces of the turf with his hand. He frowned at her sternly.

"You mustn't tempt me," he said; "I told you once I can't marry."