The Second Fiddle Part 25

He had done his best to make her realize the future, but there are certain situations in life when doing one's best to make a person aware of a fact is equivalent to throwing dust in his eyes. And Stella herself might by a species of divine fooling, have outwitted both himself and her. She might be marrying Julian for pity under the mask of love.

Her pity was divine, and he could stand it for himself perfectly; but he couldn't stand it for her. Why had she shivered when he had said he was going to bring her home? He cursed his helplessness. If he had not been crippled he would have taken her by surprise, and let his instincts judge for him; but he had had to lie there like a log, knowing that if he asked her to come to him, she would have blinded him by her swift, prepared responsiveness.

The moment on the downs hardly counted. She had been so frightened that it had been like taking advantage of her to take her in his arms.

The one comfort he clung to was her fierce thrust at his pride. He repeated it over and over to himself for rea.s.surance. She had said, if he wouldn't marry her, he would make her morally a cripple. That really sounded like love, for only love dares to strike direct at the heart. If he could see her, he knew it would be all right; if even she had written (she had written, of course, but had missed the midnight post), he would have been swept back into the safety of their shared companionship. But in his sudden loneliness he mistrusted fortune. When a man has had the conceit knocked out of him, he is not immediately the stronger for it; and he is the more vulnerable to doubt not only of himself, but of others. The saddest part of self-distrust is that it breeds suspicion.

It would be useless to speak to his mother about it, for, though a just woman, she was predominantly his mother; she wanted Stella too much for Julian to admit a doubt of Stella's wanting him for herself. She would have tried to close all his questions with facts. This method of discussion appealed to Julian as a rule, but he had begun to discover that there are deeper things than facts.

Lady Verny was in London at a flower show, and Julian was sitting in the summer-house, which he was planning to turn into a room for Stella. His misgivings had not yet begun to interfere with his plans. He had just decided to have one of the walls above the water meadows replaced by gla.s.s when his attention was attracted by the most extraordinary figure he had ever seen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The most extraordinary figure we had ever seen]

She was advancing rapidly down a gra.s.s path, between Lady Verny's favorite herbaceous borders, pursued by the butler. At times Thompson, stout and breathless, succeeded in reaching her side, evidently for the purpose of expostulation, only to be swept backward by the impetuosity of her speed. Eurydice was upon a secret mission. She had borrowed a pound from Stella with which to carry it out; and she was not going to be impeded by a butler.

She no longer followed the theories of Mr. Bolt, but she still had to wear out the kind of clothes that went with Mr. Bolt's theories. He liked scarlet hats. Eurydice's hat was scarlet, and her dress was a long purple robe that hung straight from her shoulders.

It was cut low in the neck, with a system of small scarlet tabloids let in around the shoulders. Golden b.a.l.l.s, which were intended to represent pomegranates, dangled from her waist.

Eurydice's hair was thick and very dark; there was no doing anything with it. Her eyebrows couched menacingly above her stormy eyes. Her features were heavy and colorless, except her mouth, which was unnaturally (and a little unevenly) red.

She wore no gloves,--she had left them behind in the train,--and she carried a scarlet parasol with a broken rib.

"I wish you'd send this man away," she said as she approached Julian.

"He keeps getting under my feet, and I dislike menials. I saw where you were for myself. I nearly got bitten by a brute of a dog on the terrace.

You have no right to keep a creature that's a menace to the public."

"I regret that you have been inconvenienced," said Julian, politely; "but I must point out to you that the public are not expected upon the terrace of a private garden."

"As far as that goes," said Eurydice, frowning at a big bed of blue Delphiniums, "n.o.body has a right to have a private garden."

Thompson, with an enormous effort, physical as well as spiritual, cut off the end of the border by a flying leap, and reached the young woman's elbow.

"If you please, Sir Julian," he gasped, "this lady says she'd rather not give her name. She didn't wish to wait in the hall, nor in the drawing-room, sir, and I've left James sitting on Ostrog's 'ead,--or I'd have been here before. What with one thing and another, Sir Julian, I came as quickly as I could."

"I saw you did, Thompson," said Julian, with a gleam of laughter; "and now you may go. Tell James to get off Ostrog's head." He turned his eyes on his visitor. "I am Miss Waring," she said as the butler vanished.

"This is extraordinarily kind of you," Julian said, steadying himself with one hand, and holding out his other to Eurydice. "I think you must be Miss Eurydice, aren't you? I was looking forward to meeting you to-morrow. I hope nothing is wrong with Stella?"

"Everything is wrong with her," flashed Eurydice, ignoring his outstretched hand; "but she doesn't know I've come to talk to you about it. She'd never forgive me if she did. So if I say anything you don't like, you can revenge yourself on me by telling her. I haven't come to be _kind_, as you call it. I care far too much for the truth."

"Still, you may as well sit down," said Julian, drawing a chair toward her with his free hand. "The truth is quite compatible with a wicker arm-chair. You needn't lean back in it if you're afraid of relaxing your moral fiber.

"As to revenge, I always choose my own, and even if you make it necessary, I don't suppose it will include your sister. What you suggest would have the disadvantage of doing that, wouldn't it? I mean the disadvantage to me. It hasn't struck you apparently as a disadvantage that you are acting disloyally toward your sister in doing what you know she would dislike."

Eurydice flung back her head and stared at him. She accepted the edge of the wicker arm-chair provisionally. Her eyes traveled relentlessly over Julian. She took in, and let him see that she took in, the full extent of his injury; but she spared him pity. She looked as if she were annoyed with him for having injuries.

"What I'm doing," she said, "is my business, not yours. It mightn't please Stella,--I must take the risk of that,--but if it saves her from you, it will be worth it."

Julian bowed; his eyes sparkled. An enemy struck him as preferable to a secret doubt.

"I didn't know," she said after a slight pause which Julian did nothing to relieve, "that you were as badly hurt as you appear to be. It makes it harder for me to talk to you as freely as I had intended."

"I a.s.sure you," said Julian, smiling, "that you need have no such scruples. My incapacities are local, and I can stand a long tongue as well as most men, even if I like it as little."

"I thought you would be insolent, and you are insolent," said Eurydice, with gloomy satisfaction. "That was one of the things I said to Stella."

Julian leaned forward, and for a moment his frosty, blue eyes softened as he looked at her.

"I admit I'm not very civil if I'm wrongly handled," he said in a more conciliatory tone. "Your manner was just a trifle unfortunate, Miss Eurydice; but I'd really like to be friends with you. I've not forgotten that Stella told me you were her 'special' sister. Shall we start quite afresh, and you just tell me as nicely as you know how what wrong you think I'm doing Stella?"

"I couldn't possibly be friends with you," Eurydice said coldly. "The sight of you disgusts me."

Julian lowered his eyes for a moment; when he raised them again the friendliness had gone. They were as hard as wind-swept seas.

"I suppose," he suggested quietly, "that you have some point to make.

Isn't that a little off it?"

"I don't mean physically," said Eurydice, with a wave of her hand which included his crutches. "You can't help being a cripple. It is morally I am sick to think of you. Here you are, surrounded by luxury, waited on hand and foot by menials, and yet you can't face your hardships alone--you are so parasitic by nature that you have to drag down a girl like Stella by trading on her pity."

"It would," said Julian in a level voice, holding his temper down by an effort, "be rather difficult for even the cleverest parasite to drag your sister down in the sense of degrading her. Possibly you merely refer to her having consented to marry me?"

"No, I don't," said Eurydice, obstinately. "I call it dragging a person down if you make them sacrifice their integrity. Stella and I always agreed about that before. She cared more for the truth than anything.

Now she doesn't; she cares more about hurting your feelings. I faced her with it last night, and she never even attempted to answer me. She only said, 'Oh, don't!' and covered her face with her hands."

"What unspeakable thing did you say to her?" asked Julian, savagely, "to make her do that?"

Ostrog, released from James, rejoined them, cowering down at his master's feet; he was aware that he was in the presence of an anger fiercer than his own.

"I didn't come here to mince matters," said Eurydice, defiantly. "If you want to know what I said to Stella, I asked her why she was going to marry a tyrannical, sterile cripple?"

For a moment Julian did not answer her; when he did, he had regained an even quieter manner than before.

"Very forcibly put," he said in a low voice; "and your sister covered her face with her hands and said, 'Oh, don't!'--you must have felt very proud of yourself."

"If you think I like hurting Stella, you're wrong," said Eurydice. "But I'd rather hurt her now than see her whole life twisted out of shape by giving way to a feeling that isn't the strongest feeling in her, or I wouldn't have come down here. But she didn't deny it."

"What didn't she deny?" asked Julian.

"What I came to tell you," said Eurydice. "The strongest feeling in Stella's life is her love for Mr. Travers, and she gave him up because she discovered that it was also the strongest thing in mine."

Julian flung back his head.

"Seriously, Miss Eurydice," he asked, "are you asking me to believe that your sister's in love with a town clerk?"

Eurydice flushed crimson under the undisguised amus.e.m.e.nt in Julian's eyes. He was amused, even though he had suddenly remembered that Mr.

Travers was the name of the town clerk.