The Second Fiddle Part 27

"It's all so extravagant and absurd," said Lady Verny, quickly, "and so utterly unlike Julian! I have never known him to alter an arrangement in his life, and as to breaking his word! I left him happier than I have ever seen him. He'd been telling me that you insisted on my staying with you after your marriage. I told him that I had always thought it a most out-of-place and unsuitable plan, and that he couldn't have two women in our respective positions in his house, and he laughed and said: 'Oh, yes, I can. Stella has informed me that marrying me isn't a position; it's to be looked on in the light of an intellectual convenience. You're to run the house, and she's to run me. I've quite fallen in with it.' I think that was the last thing he said, and when I came back, there was his astounding letter to say that your marriage was impossible, and that I was on no account to send him on your letters or to refer to you in mine.

"He gave me his banker's address, and said that he'd see me later on, and had started some intelligence work for the War Office. He was good enough to add that I might go and see you if I liked. I really think he must be mad, unless you can throw some light on the subject. A letter came from you after he had gone."

Stella, who had been without any color at all, suddenly flushed.

"Ah," she said, "I'm glad he didn't read that before he went! I mean, if he'd gone after reading it, I should have felt--" She put out her hands with a curious little helpless gesture, but she did not say what she would have felt.

"Can't you explain?" Lady Verny asked gravely. "Can't you explain _anything_? You _were_ perfectly happy, weren't you? I haven't been a blind, meddling, incompetent old idiot, have I?"

Stella shook her head.

"When he left me," she said, "he gave me this." She took it out of her belt and handed it to Lady Verny; it was a check for two hundred pounds inclosed in a piece of paper, on which was written, "Dearest, please!"

"I took it," said Stella.

Lady Verny was silent for a moment; then she said more gravely still:

"My dear, I think I ought to tell you something,--it is not fair not to let you have every possible indication that there is,--but the day after you left, while I was away, I hear from Thompson, who seemed to be extremely upset by her, that a lady _did_ call to see Julian and she would not give her name. Thompson says he thinks she was a foreigner.

"I do not know what Julian may have told you about his life, but I myself am quite positive he would have asked no woman to marry him unless he felt himself free from any possible entanglement. Still, there it is: he went away after this person's visit."

For a moment it seemed to Stella that some inner citadel of security within her had collapsed. She knew so little about men; she had nothing but her instincts to guide her, and the memory of Eugenie Matisse's evil, laughing eyes. She covered her face with her hands and shut out every thought but Julian. It seemed to her as if she had never been so alone with him before, as if in some strange, hidden way she was plunging into the depths of his soul.

When she looked up she had regained her calm.

"No," she said; "I am quite sure of Julian. Perhaps some woman could make him feel shaken--shaken about its being right to marry me. I can believe that, if she was very cruel and clever and knew how to hurt him most; but there is nothing else, or Julian would have told me."

Lady Verny gave a long sigh of relief.

"That is what I think myself," she said; "but I couldn't have tried to persuade you of it. My dear, did Julian know that you had always loved him?"

Stella shook her head.

"I thought he knew all that mattered," she explained. "I didn't tell him anything else. You see, there was so very little time, and I was rather cowardly, perhaps. I didn't want him just _at once_ to know that I had loved him before he even knew that I existed."

"I see, I see," said Lady Verny. "But would you mind his knowing now? He can't be allowed to behave in this extraordinary way, popping off like a conjurer without so much as leaving a decent address behind him. I intend to tell him precisely what I think of his behavior, and I hope that you will do the same."

Stella turned round to face Lady Verny.

"No," she said firmly; "neither of us must do that. I don't know why Julian has done this at all, but it is quite plain that he does not want to be interfered with. He wishes to act alone, and I think he must act alone. I shall not write to him or try to see him."

"But, my dear child," exclaimed Lady Verny, "how, if we enter into this dreadful conspiracy of silence, can anything come right?"

"I don't know," said Stella, quietly; "but Julian let it go wrong quite by himself, and I think it must come right, if it comes right at all, in the same way. If it didn't, he would distrust it. I shouldn't--I should be perfectly happy just to see him; but, then, you see, I _know_ it's all right. Julian doesn't. Seeing me wouldn't make it so; it would simply make him give in, and go on distrusting. We couldn't live like that. You see, I don't _know_ what has happened; but I do know what he wants, so I think I must do it."

"But you don't think this state of things is what he _wants_, do you?"

Lady Verny demanded. "I may of course be mistaken, but up till now I have been able to judge fairly well what a man wanted of a woman when he couldn't take his eyes off her face."

"He wants me more than that," said Stella, proudly. "I think he wants me very nearly--not quite--as much as I want him. That's why I couldn't make him take less than he wanted. To take me and not trust me would be to take less. If we leave him quite alone for six months or a year, perhaps, he'll have stopped shutting his mind up against his feelings.

It might be safer then to make an appeal to him; but I shouldn't like to appeal to him. Still, I don't say I won't do anything you think right, dear Lady Verny, if you want me to, to make him happier; only I must be _sure_ that it will make him happier _first_. I know now that it wouldn't."

"You're the most extraordinary creature!" said Lady Verny. "Of course I always knew you were, but it's something to be so justified of one's instincts. I'm not sure that I sha'n't do precisely what you say--for quite different reasons. Julian will count on one of us disobeying his injunctions, and he'll be perfectly exasperated not to have news of you.

Well, exasperation isn't going to do any man any harm; it'll end by jerking him into some common-sense question, if nothing else will."

Stella smiled, but she shook her head.

"Please don't hope," she said under her breath.

"There's one thing," Lady Verny said after a short pause, "that I do ask you to be sensible about. I can't take you abroad, as there hardly seems at the present time any abroad to take you to, but I want you to come and live with me. I think, after all this, I really rather need a companion."

Stella hid her face in Lady Verny's lap.

"I can't," she whispered. "You're too like him."

Lady Verny said nothing at all for a moment; she looked about the room.

It was clean; for a London room it was quite clean, and Stella thought she had hidden all the holes in the carpet. Lady Verny's ruthless, practised eye took the faded, shabby little room to pieces and reconstructed the rest of the dingy makeshift home from it. She knew that Stella's room would be the worst of all.

"My dear," she said at last, "you are so very nearly a member of my family that I think I may appeal to you about its honor. Are you going to live like this and not let me help you? You are not strong enough to work, and this folly of poor Julian's won't make you any stronger. Since you can't live with me, won't you accept a little of what is really yours?"

"Money?" asked Stella, looking up into Lady Verny's face. "I would if you weren't his mother, because I love you; but I can't now. You see, Julian's taken his honor away from me; he's left me only my own. I know he'll think me cruel, and I'll never return what I did take. He'll think perhaps I would use it, if I needed it, and that may make him happier; but I mustn't take any more. I must be cruel."

"Yes, you're very cruel," said Lady Verny, kissing her. "Well, I sha'n't bully you, for I wouldn't do it myself. It'll only make my heart ache in a new way, and really, I'm so used to its aching that I oughtn't to grumble at any fresh manifestation. As to Julian's heart, he's been so extraordinarily silly that only the fact that folly is a sign of love induces me to believe he's got one." She rose to her feet, with her arms still about Stella. "I'm simply not to mention you at all?" she asked.

Stella shook her head. She clung to Lady Verny speechlessly, but without tears.

"And when I see him next," Lady Verny asked a little dryly,--"and, presumably, he'll send for me in about a fortnight,--he'll say, 'Well, did she take the money'? What am I to answer to that?"

"Say," whispered Stella, "that she would have liked to take it, but she couldn't."

"I could make up something a great deal crueller to say than that," said Lady Verny, grimly. "However, I dare say you're right; it sounds so precisely like you that it's bound to hurt him more than any gibe."

Stella burst into tears.

"Oh, don't! don't!" she sobbed. "You must--you must be kind to him! I don't want anything in the world to hurt him."

"I know you don't," said Lady Verny, gently. "You little silly, I only wanted to make you cry. It'll be easier if you cry a little."

Stella cried more than ever then, because Lady Verny was so terribly like Julian.

CHAPTER XXVII

It was the hour of the day that Julian liked least. Until four o'clock in the afternoon his mind was protected by blinkers; he saw the road ahead of him, but the unmerciful vastness of the world was hidden from him. He was thankful that he could not see it, because it was possessed by Stella.

He could keep her out of his work; but there was no other subject she left untouched, no prospect that was not penetrated with her presence, no moment of his consciousness that she did not ruthlessly share.