The Second Fiddle Part 24

"I had a lively time over my hopping; but the odd part of it was the sense of security I often had, as if some one back of me was giving me a straight tip. I don't understand concentration. You'd say it is your own doing, of course, and yet behind your power of holding on to things, it seems as if Something Else was holding on much harder. It's as if you set a ball rolling, and some one else kicked it in the right direction.

"After I'd been in Germany for a month I began to believe in an Invisible Kicker-Off. It was company for me, for I was lonely. I had to calculate every word I said, and there's no sense of companionship where one has to calculate. The feeling that there was something back of me was quite a help. I'd get to the end of my job, and then something fresh would be pushed toward me.

"For instance, I met a couple of naval officers by chance,--I wasn't out for anything naval,--and they poured submarine facts into me as you pour milk into a jug--facts that we needed more than the points I'd come to find out.

"I'm not at all sure," Julian finished reflectively, "that if you grip hard enough under pressure, you don't tap facts.

"Have you ever watched a crane work? You shift a lever, and it comes down as easily as a parrot picks up a pencil; it'll lift a weight that a hundred men can't move an inch, and swing it up as if it were packing feathers. Funny idea, if there's a law that works like that.

"I came back through Alsace and Lorraine, meaning to slip through the French lines. A sentry winged me in the woods. Pure funk on his part; he never even came to hunt up what he'd let fly at. But it finished my job."

Lady Verny folded up her embroidery.

"It was worth the finish, Julian," she said quickly. "I am glad you told me, because I had not thought so before." Then she left them.

"It isn't finished, Julian," murmured Stella in a low voice. "It never can be when it's you."

"Well," said Julian, "it's all I've got to give you; so I'm rather glad you like it, Stella."

They talked till half the long summer night was gone. She sat near him, and sometimes Julian let his hand touch her shoulder or her hair while he unpacked his heart to her. The bitterness of his reserve was gone.

"I think perhaps I could have stood it decently if it hadn't been for Marian," he explained. "I was d.a.m.ned weak about her, and that's a fact.

You see, I thought she had the kind of feeling for me that women sometimes have and which some men deserve; but I'm bound to admit I wasn't one of them. When I saw that Marian took things rather the way I should have taken them myself, I went down under it. I said, 'That's the end of love.' It was the end of the kind I was fit for, the kind that has an end.

"Now I'm going to tell you something. I never shall again, so you must make the most of it, and keep it to hold on to when I behave badly.

You've put the fear of G.o.d into me, Stella. Nothing else would have made me give in to you; and you know I have given in to you, don't you?"

"You've given me everything in the world I want," said Stella, gently, "if that's what you call giving in to me."

"I've done more than that," said Julian, quietly. "I've let you take my will and turn it with that steady little hand of yours; and it's the first time--and I don't say it won't be the last--that I've let any man or woman change my will for me.

"Now I'm going to send you to bed. I oughtn't to have you kept you up like this; but if I've got to let you go back to your people to-morrow, we had to know each other a little better first, hadn't we? I've been trying not to know you all these months.

"Before you go, would you mind telling me about Mr. Travers and the cat?"

"No," said Stella, with a startled look; "anything else in the world, Julian, but not Mr. Travers and the cat."

"Ostrog and I are frightfully jealous by nature," Julian pleaded. "He wouldn't be at all nice to that cat if he met it without knowing its history."

"He can't be unkind to the poor cat," said Stella; "it's dead."

"And is Mr. Travers dead, too?" asked Julian.

"I should think," said Stella, "that he was about as dead as the red-haired girl in the library."

"What red-haired girl?" cried Julian, sharply. "Who's been telling you--I mean what made you think I knew her? It's a remarkably fine bit of painting."

"But you did know her," said Stella; "only don't tell me anything about her unless you want to."

"I won't refuse to answer any questions you ask," said Julian after a pause, "but I'd much rather wait until we're married. I am a little afraid of hurting you; you wouldn't be hurt, you see, if you were used to me and knew more about men. You're an awfully clever woman, Stella, but the silliest little girl I ever knew."

"I'll give up the red-haired girl if you'll give up Mr. Travers," said Stella. She rose, and stood by his side, looking out of the window.

"Do you want to say good night, or would you rather go to bed without?"

he asked her.

"Of course I'll say good night," said Stella. "But, Julian, there are some things I so awfully hate your doing. Saying good night doesn't happen to be one of them. It's lighting my candle unless I'm sure you want to. I want to be quite certain you don't mind me in little things like that."

Julian put his arms round her and kissed her as gently as he would have kissed a child. "Of course you shall light your candle," he said tenderly, "just to show I don't mind you. But it isn't my pride now. I don't a bit object to your seeing I can't. I'm quite sure of you, you see; unless you meant to hurt me, you simply couldn't do it. And if you meant to hurt me, it would be because you wanted to stop me hurting myself, like this afternoon, wouldn't it?"

Stella nodded. She wanted to tell him that she had always loved him, long before he remembered that she existed. All the while he had felt himself alone, she was as near him as the air that touched his cheek.

But she could not find words in which to tell him of her secret companionship. The instinct that would have saved them only brushed her heart in pa.s.sing.

Julian was alarmed at her continued silence.

"You're not frightened or worried or anything, are you?" he asked anxiously. "Sure you didn't mind saying good night? It's not compulsory, you know, even if we are engaged. I'd hate to bother you."

"I'm not bothered," Stella whispered; "I--only love you. I was saying it to you in my own way."

"I'll wait three days for you," said Julian, firmly. "Not an hour more.

You quite understand, don't you, that I'm coming up at the end of three days to bring you home for good?"

Stella shivered as she thought of Redcliffe Square. Julian wouldn't like Redcliffe Square, and she wouldn't be able to make him like it; and yet she wouldn't be able not to mind his not liking it.

Julian knew nothing about Redcliffe Square, but he noticed that Stella shivered when he told her that he was going to bring her home for good.

CHAPTER XXV

It would be too strong an expression to say that after Stella's departure Julian suffered from reaction. He himself couldn't have defined what he suffered from, but he was uneasy.

He had given himself away to Stella as he had never in his wildest dreams supposed that one could give oneself away to a woman. But he wasn't worrying about that; he hadn't minded giving himself away to Stella.

Samson was the character in the Old Testament whom Julian most despised, because he had let Delilah get things out of him. What Samson had got back hadn't been worth it, and could probably have been acquired without the sacrifice of his hair. He had simply given in to Delilah because he had a soft spot for her; and Delilah quite blamelessly (from Julian's point of view) had retaliated by crying out, "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!"

Julian had always felt perfectly safe with women of this type; they couldn't have entrapped him. But there wasn't an inch of Delilah in Stella. She had no Philistines up her sleeve for any of the contingencies of life and she had not tried to get anything out of Julian.

That was where his uneasiness began. He understood her sufficiently to trust her, but he was aware that beyond his confidence she was a mapless country; he did not even know which was water and which was land. His uncertainty had made him shrink from telling Stella about Eugenie Matisse.

If Marian had been sharp enough--she probably wouldn't have been--to guess that Julian knew the girl in the picture, she would have known, too, precisely what kind of girl she was, and she would have thought none the worse of Julian.

But he didn't know what Stella expected. He wasn't afraid that she would cast him off for that or any other of his experiences; then he would have told her. She would have forgiven him as naturally as she loved him; but what if her forgiveness had involved her pain?

He had spoken the truth when he told Stella that she had "put the fear of G.o.d into him." Julian had not known much about G.o.d before or anything about fear; but he was convinced now that the fear of G.o.d was not that G.o.d might let you down, but that you might let down G.o.d. He wanted to be as careful of Stella as if she had been a government secret.

Did she know in the least what she was in for. Or was she like an unconscious Iphigenia vowed off to mortal peril by an inadvertent parent?