The Second Fiddle Part 19

She came into his library every morning at ten o'clock, and this Julian, looking out of the window or at Ostrog or at the ceiling, dictated to her in a dry voice, slowly and distinctly, the first draft of a chapter.

Julian had never worked with an efficient woman before, and Stella's promptness and prevision surprised him; but this Julian never showed any surprise. He did the work he had set himself to do from the notes he had prepared before she came. If there were any facts of which he was doubtful, he asked her to look them up, telling her where she would be likely to find references to them. Stella went to the right bookcase by a kind of instinct, placed a careful hand on the book, and found the index with flying fingers. She never asked this Julian questions or troubled him with her own opinions. She carried off her notes without comment, and returned them to him carefully typed for his final inspection next morning. It was like the town hall, only quieter.

The second Julian was almost like a friend. He was a mischievous, challenging Julian, who wouldn't at any price have an impersonal, carefully drilled secretary beside him, but who insisted upon Stella's active cooperation. They discussed the chapter from every point before they wrote it. This Julian demanded her opinions; he dragged out her criticisms and fought them. He made their work together a perilous, inspiriting tug-of-war. The chapters that resulted from this cooperation were by far the most interesting in the book. They even interested Julian.

But these were rare days, and what was most curious to Stella was that Julian, who seemed at least to enjoy them as much as she did, should appear to want to suppress and curtail them. He was obviously reluctant to let the second Julian have his fling.

Stella saw the third Julian only in the evenings. He was a polite and courteous host, stranger to Stella than either of the others. He was always on his guard, as if he feared that either of the watchful women who wanted to see him happy might think he was happy or might, more fatally still, treat him as if he were unhappy.

While Stella and Lady Verny were anxiously watching the transformations of Julian, spring came to Amberley. It came very quietly, in a cold, green visibility, clothing the chilly, s.h.i.+vering trees in splendor. The hedges shone with a green as light as water, and out of their dried brown gra.s.ses the fields sprang into emerald. The streams that ran through the valley fed myriads of primroses. Stella found them everywhere, in lonely copses, in high-shouldered lanes, or growing like pale suns.h.i.+ne underneath the willows.

The spring was young and fugitive at Amberley; it fled before its own promises, and hid behind a cloak of winter. Dull gray days, cold showers, and nipping raw down winds defied it, and for weeks the earth looked as hard as any stone; but still the green leaves unsheathed themselves, and the birds sang their truculent triumphant songs, certain of victory.

Lady Verny spent all her time in the garden now, watching against dangers, preparing for new births, protecting the helpless, and leaving things alone. The bulbs were up and out already; crocus and daffodil, hyacinth and narcissus, flooded the glades and glens. Crocuses ran like a flock of small gold flames under the dark yew-hedges; daffodils streamed down the hillside to the lakes, looking as if they meant to overtake the sailing swans. The willows in the valley had apricot and pale-gold stems. They hung s.h.i.+vering over the lake like a race of phantom lovers searching for their lost brides.

Stella never saw Julian outdoors. He was always interested and polite about the garden, but he was never in it. He did not seem to want to see things grow. She did not know how far he could drag himself upon his crutches, and it gave her a little shock of surprise to find him one day in one of her favorite haunts.

It was outside the garden altogether, behind the village street. A sunk lane under high hedges led to a solitary farm. One of the fields on the way to it overlooked a sheltered copse of silver birches. Julian was stretched at full length under the hedge, looking down into the wood; his crutches lay beside him. Under the silver birches the ground was as blue as if the sky had sprung up out of the earth. There was no s.p.a.ce at all for anything but bluebells. Far away in the valley a cuckoo called its first compelling notes.

Julian's face was set. He looked through the silver-and-blue copse as if it were not there; his eyes held a tortured universe.

Stella would have slipped away from him unseen, but his voice checked her.

"Is that you, Stella?" he asked quietly. "Won't you come and sit down here and look at this d.a.m.ned pretty world with me?"

His voice was startlingly bitter; it was the first time that he had used her name.

She came to him quickly, and sat down beside him, motionless and alert.

She knew that this was yet another Julian, and an instinct told her that this was probably the real one.

He, too, said nothing for a moment; then he began to speak with little jerks between his sentences.

"What do you suppose," he said, "is the idea? You know what I mean? You saw the papers this morning? Have you ever seen a man ga.s.sed? I did once, in Wales--a mine explosion. We got to the fellows. One of them was dead, and one was mad, and one would have liked to be mad or dead. I rather gather that about two or three thousand Canadians were ga.s.sed near Ypres. They stood, you know,--stood as long as you can stand,--ga.s.sed. I always thought that phrase, 'died at their posts,'

misleading. There aren't any posts, for one thing, and, then, dying--well, you don't die quickly from gas. If you're fairly strong, it's a solid performance, and takes at the least several hours.

"I beg your pardon. I oughtn't to talk to you like that. Please forgive me for being such a brute. On such a lovely morning, too! Are there any new bulbs up? I ought to be ashamed of myself."

"Julian--" said Stella.

He turned his head quickly and looked at her.

"Yes," he said; "what is it?"

"You ought to be ashamed _not_ to talk to me," Stella said, with sudden fierceness. "Doesn't it make any difference to you that we're friends?"

He put his hand over hers.

"Yes," he said, smiling; "but I happen to be rather afraid of differences."

He took his hand away as quickly as he had touched her.

"Do you know," she asked in a low voice, "what was the saddest thing I ever saw--the saddest and the most terrible?"

"No," he said, turning his eyes carefully back to the silver birches; "but I have an idea that it was something that happened to somebody else."

"Yes," said Stella; "it happened to a sea-gull. It was the only time I ever went to the sea. Eurydice had been ill, and I went away with her. I think I was fourteen. I had gone out alone after tea on to the cliffs when I saw a motionless sea-gull at the very edge. I walked close up to it. It was as still as a stone, and when I came up, O Julian, one of its wings was broken! It could not fly again. Its eyes were searching the sea with such despair in them; it knew it could not fly again. I picked it up and carried it home. We did everything we could for it, but it died--like that, without ever changing the despair in its eyes--because it could not fly."

"Lucky brute to be able to die," said Julian under his breath. Stella said nothing. "Why did you tell me?" he asked after a pause. "Any lesson attached to it?"

She shook her head.

"You're not crying?" he asked suspiciously. Then he looked at her. She was sitting very still, biting her lips to keep her tears back.

"You really mustn't, Stella!" he urged in a queer, soft voice she had never heard him use before. "I'm not a sea-gull and I'm not dying, and I'm not even a stone."

"No," she whispered, "but you're just like the sea-gull: you won't share your pain."

"Look here," said Julian, "I--you--Would you mind sitting on that log over there,--it's quite dry,--just opposite? Thanks. Now I can talk more easily. I want you to remember that I'm a million times better off than most people. What troubles me isn't what the vicar calls my affliction.

I'm rather proud of what I'm able to do with a pair of crutches in six months. It's being out of it; that's what set me off on those Canadian chaps. I miss the idea that I might be in that kind of thing, rather.

You see, I feel quite well. I'll settle down to it in time, and I won't shut you out, if you'll remember not to let me--you're most awfully innocent, aren't you? D'you mind telling me how old you are?"

"Twenty-eight," said Stella. "But I'm not really innocent. I think I know all the horrible things."

Julian laughed ruefully. "You wouldn't see them coming though," he said; "and, besides, the things that aren't innocent are by no means always horrible. However, that's not what I was going to say. If we're to be friends at all, and it's not particularly easy even for me to live in the same house with you and not be friends, you'll have to help me pretty considerably."

"How shall I help you?" Stella asked eagerly. "I have wanted to, you know. I mean that I did sometimes think you wanted to be friends--as Mr. Travers did when he tried to become human because his cat died. I haven't told you about that; it made him see how important it was. And when you didn't want to be friendly, I tried not to bother you; I just went on with the work. That _was_ the best way, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Julian, carefully. "You did the work uncommonly well, my dear, and you never bothered me in that way. I'm afraid I don't quite follow Mr. Travers. I suppose he is the town clerk, isn't he? He may have meant the same thing that I do; but I should have thought it would have been--well--simpler for him. I don't know how to explain to you what I mean. You remember Marian?" Stella nodded, "I came a cropper over Marian," Julian explained. "She behaved extraordinarily well. No one could possibly blame her; but she wasn't exactly the kind of woman I'd banked on, and I had banked on her pretty heavily. When I saw my mistake, I understood that I wasn't fit for marriage, and I became reconciled to it. I mean I accepted the idea thoroughly. It would be tying a woman to a log. But I don't want to start feeling just yet--any kind of feeling. Even nice, mild, pitying friends.h.i.+p like yours stings.

D'you understand?"

"I'm not mild and I'm not pitying," said Stella, quietly. "And you don't only shut me out; you shut out everybody. Why, you won't even let yourself go over your old polar bears in the book!"

"I can't afford to let myself go," said Julian, "even to the extent of a polar bear--with you."

"Just because I'm a woman?" asked Stella, regretfully.

"If you like, you may put it that way," agreed Julian; "and as to the rest of the world, it's very busy just at present fighting Germans. All the men I like are either dead or will be soon. What's the use of getting 'em down here to look at a broken sign-post? I'd rather keep to myself till I've got going. I will get going again, and you'll help me, if you'll try to remember what I've just told you."

"Oh, I shall _remember_ it," replied Stella, hurriedly; "only I don't quite know what it is. Still, I dare say, if I think it over, I shall find out. At any rate, I'm _very, very_ glad you'll let me help you. Of course I think you're all wrong about the other men. You think too much of the outside of things. I dare say it's better than thinking too little, as we do in our family. Besides, you have such a lovely house and live so tidily. Still, I think it's a mistake. The men wouldn't see your crutches half as much as they'd see _you_. The things that matter most are always behind what anybody sees. Even all this beauty isn't half as beautiful as what's behind it--the spirit of the life that creates it, and brings it back again."

"And the ugliness," asked Julian, steadily, "the ugliness we've just been talking about over there, that long line of it cutting through France like a mortal wound, drawing the life-blood of Europe,--what's behind that?"

"Don't you see?" she cried, leaning toward him eagerly. "Exactly the same thing--life! All this quietness that reproduces what it takes away, only always more beautifully. Don't you think, while we see here the pa.s.sing of the great procession of spring, behind in the invisible, where their poured-out souls have rushed to, is a greater procession still, forming for us to join? That even the ugliness is only an awful way out into untouched beauty, like a winter storm that breaks the ground up for the seed to grow?"

"I can see that _you_ see it," said Julian, gently. "I can't see anything else just now. You'd better cut along back to the house; you'll be late for lunch. Tell my mother I'm not coming--and--and try not to think I'm horrid if I'm not always friendly with you. I sha'n't be so unfriendly as I sound."

"I don't believe you know," said Stella, consideringly, "how very nice I always think you--"