Stella Croyle

“ Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it. But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf now separated these two.
He had called at a nursing home close to Portland Place where a Colonel Oakley lay dying of a malignant disease. Oakley had been the chief spirit of reviving the moral and the confidence of the disgraced Clayfords. ”

“ Stella Croyle was silent for a few moments.
"Yes, that's true," and she laughed suddenly. "When things go wrong, I become rather impossible. I have often made up my mind to live entirely in the country, but I never carry the plan out."
She let Hillyard drink his tea and light a cigarette before she approached the question which was torturing her.
"You had a good time in the Sudan!" she began. "Lots of heads?"
"Yes. I had a perfect time."
"And your friend? Captain Luttrell. Did you meet him?"
Hillyard had pondered on the answer which he would give to her when she asked that question. ”

“ Hillyard stood between loyalty to his friend and the recollection of Stella Croyle's tears. If Luttrell had not told her—why then——
"Then I don't well see how I can," he said uncomfortably.
"But I want to know," said Stella, bending her brows at him in astonishment that he should refuse her so small a thing. Then her manner changed. "Oh, I do want to know," she cried, and Hillyard's obstinacy broke down.
Men have the strangest fancies which compel them to do out of all reason, even the things which they hate to do, and to put aside what they hold most dear. ”

“ CHAPTER IV The Secret of Harry Luttrell
"Shall I take you home?"
"Oh, will you?" cried Stella Croyle, with a little burst of pleasure. After all, Hillyard was the great man of the evening, and that he should consider her out of all that company was pleasant. "I will get my cloak."
Throughout the supper-party Hillyard had been at a loss to discover in Stella Croyle the woman whom Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits were high, but unforced. She chattered away with more gaiety than wit, like the rest of Hardiman's guests, but the gaiety was apt to the occasion. ”

“ The blood mounted into Stella Croyle's face. Since that was true—and she did not doubt Jenny Prask for a moment—Jenny would have given anything she had to save her mistress trouble, and Stella knew it. Since it was true, then, that Mario Escobar was staying hidden away in a country hotel five miles off, and that Joan was writing to him, why, after all, she had no rival.
Her spirits rose with a bound. She had a week, a whole week, in the company of Harry Luttrell; and what might she not do in a week if she used her wits and used her beauty! Stella Croyle ran down the stairs like a girl. ”

“ The men drifted out of the hall on to the lawn, leaving Sir Chichester brooding above the outspread sheets of the Harpoon. Here was the insoluble sinister question to which somehow he had to find an answer. Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at Rackham Park; and yet in this very morning's issue of the newspaper, her death with every circumstance and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it was even known by anybody in the house itself. ”

“ Stella Croyle turned again to the fire.
"Yes," she said rather listlessly.
Yet Hillyard might almost have become a consumer of drugs, such queer and wayward fancies took him in charge. It became a fine thing to him to stay up all night just for the sake of staying up, and many a night he passed at his open window, even in winter time, doing nothing, not even dreaming, simply waiting for the day to break. It seemed to him soft and wrong that a man should take his clothes off and lie comfortably between sheets. ”

“ They had eaten with Stella Croyle in this room, played with her out there in the sunlit garden, and only one of them had suspected the overwhelming despair which had driven her so hard. They began to blame themselves. "Poor woman! Poor woman!" Millie Splay whispered in a moan.
Sir Chichester broke the silence.
"But we left Stella here when we went to Harrel," he began, and Hillyard interrupted him.
"There's no doubt that Stella sent the message," he said. "Your car, Mrs. Brown's and Luttrell's, were all used to take us to Harrel. One car remained in your garage—Stella's." ”

“ Stella's hopes and her self-esteem had for long played with the thought that it might possibly be one of those impracticable notions which had whipped Harry Luttrell up to the rupture of their alliance; that after all, it was not that he was tired of a chain. Yes, she wanted to know.
"Luttrell only told me once, only spoke about it once," said Hillyard shifting from one foot to the other. "The week after the eights. We rowed down to Kennington Island in a racing pair, had supper there——"
"Yes, yes," Stella Croyle interrupted. Oh, how dense men could be to be sure! ”

“ For Stella Croyle was not listening. All this was totally unimportant. Men always went about and about when they had difficult things to say to women. Her eyes never left his face and she would know surely enough when those words were rising to his lips which it was necessary that she should mark and understand. ”

“ But it seems to me horrible that we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week ago. I'll have no more of it."
She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!" and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Croyle. After all, that ridiculous label had not been pasted on to Harry Luttrell as a result of a week's acquaintance. Harry Luttrell had certainly talked to Stella through the greater part of an evening, his first evening in the house, but they had hardly been together at all since then. ”

“ Hillyard rang her up on the telephone the next morning and warm in his sympathy asked her to lunch with him. But it was a pitiful little voice which replied to him. Stella Croyle answered from her bed. She was not well. She would stay in bed for a day and then go to a little cottage which she owned in the country. She would see Hillyard again next year when he returned from the East.
"Yes, that's her way," said Sir Charles Hardiman. He met Hillyard the day before he sailed for Port Said and questioned him about Stella Croyle discreetly. "She runs to earth when she's unhappy. ”

“ Twice Stella had risen and lit the light to see what time it was, had stopped a moment by the side of the bed, and gazed down upon Laurel.
"Like a lovely Sleeping Beauty, she is. Oh, my God, she can't be a stenographer!" It would be like planting an orchid between the cobblestones at the corner of Washington and Winter Streets to stick Laurel in front of a typewriter, inside of one of the big grimy office-buildings downtown. She'd get all dust and dirt and trampled and spoiled in no time. She mustn't be sacrificed like that! Why, New York would go simply crazy about Lollie. ”

“ I suppose I have said enough in this and a former letter how I stand with new people; ten times better than ever I did with the old; forty times more caressed. I am to dine to-morrow at Mr. Harley’s; and if he continues as he has begun, no man has been ever better treated by another. What you say about Stella’s mother, I have spoken enough to it already. I believe she is not in town; for I have not yet seen her. My lampoon is cried up to the skies; but nobody suspects me for it, except Sir Andrew Fountaine: at least they say nothing of it to me. ”

“ The girl looked at her and then at Ted with an expression of alarm in her face. They both saw that she feared what was coming.
"What do you want to do, Singing Bird? We must be on the trail again, for we have a long way to go to the big pasture to the north," Stella continued.
"I want to stay with you, sister," said the Indian girl simply. "I will die if you send me away. I will slave for you if you will only let me stay near you. I have no one else on earth. My husband has cast me out; my father will not have me back; the white man does not want the Indian. I am alone in the world. ”

“ Sharply Stella broke in upon her. "Don't think it! You don't know me in the least. You—you have far more beauty of soul than I have, or can ever hope to have now."
Mrs. Ralston shook her head.
"But it is so," Stella insisted. "I—What am I?" A tremor of passion crept unawares into her low voice. "I am a woman who has been denied everything. I have been cast out like Eve, but without Eve's compensations. If I had been given a child to love, I might have had hope. But now I have none—I have none. I am hard and bitter,—old before my time, and I shall never now be anything else."
"Oh, darling, no!" ”

“ Laurel had never glowed about a woman before. Stella didn't know what to make of it. It perplexed her. It hurt her. It hurt her more than the possibility that Stephen might be glowing about the same woman. Who was she, anyway—this tall mysterious siren, who was bewitching Lollie with her youth and beauty and prosperity, buying the kiddie's affection, by bestowing luxuries and attentions upon her in a single week which Stella would give her eyeteeth to be able to give Laurel in a lifetime. ”

“ Why were people so unkind? What was to become of Laurel and herself? It wasn't as if there were other apartment hotels in Milhampton. The King Arthur was unique. The other places were boarding-houses, pure and simple. All sorts of people lived in them. She could no more take Laurel to a boarding-house than send her to a public school. Good heavens, this was a serious situation! Stella had received blows before, but the combination of these two, occurring both at once, and striking such vital parts of the anatomy of her social position in Milhampton, she knew would prove fatal. ”

“ The first time Stephen went to see Stella at the red cottage her vines were profuse with leaf and blossom. She had trained the docile vines to run all over the picket fence that surrounded the little house, and had shrouded the back porch with them; had shrouded with them, too, a latticed summer-house which stood in the side yard. Stella had copied the summer-house, with much the same genius with which she copied hats or dresses, from a summer-house she had seen in a garden in Milhampton across the river. Stella's summer-house was made of plasterer's laths painted white, and criss-crossed. ”

“ It was always "Lollie and me," always "we," and "us," by that time. Stella didn't even think in the singular number, once her maternal instinct had worked its way up through her vanities and self-interests and appeared in her consciousness. The seed of it must have been planted deep, for it took a period of years to appear. In vain Stephen had looked for it when Laurel was a baby ”

“ When Stephen's business took him to New York, Laurel was enrolled as a pupil in the exclusive school of the community. She attended the exclusive dancing-class, and she attended the exclusive Sunday-school. Stella belonged to a few helpful organizations herself. Her name was in the Blue Book. She had at least a bowing acquaintance with almost everybody "worth-while." She had lots of men friends. She believed she had quite a few women friends of value. ”

“ She could deceive her mother without flickering an eyelash, and could repeat to strangers the little white lies Stella taught her, with the finesse of a woman of the world, but at school in her work and play, she was never anything but strictly honest.
As experienced as Laurel was in certain of the world's cruelties, and as mature in her calm manner of acceptance of whatever befell, she was amazingly young and innocent about many of the facts of life. Another antithesis. Much younger and much more innocent than the group of sophisticated little girls in her class at school. ”

“ Five minutes later Stella became tearful. Laurel brought her a handkerchief.
"I should think," she wailed, after she had vigorously blown her nose and mopped her eyes, "you'd want me to have a little of the good times you've been enjoying these three weeks while I've been cooped up here in bed. I like nice people, and things going on myself. You know I do. But just the minute I am able to get out of bed and take in a little of the gayety and excitement, you let a silly quarrel with a young fellow you never saw three weeks ago cheat me of it all." ”

“ Meanwhile Stella put on a smiling face to the world,—for, after all, the world smiled on her,—and she was gentle with Sir Oliver and Lady Blount. She mingled in such social life as the neighbourhood afforded—a luncheon party, a garden party, where young men fell at her feet in polite adoration, and young women put their arms round her waist and talked to her of hats. ”

“ Experience had taught Stella that a big buzzing fly is as ineffective in breaking through a plate-glass barrier.
"Well," gloomily, "what are you going to do with yourself, then? You can't hang around a five-roomed apartment all your life, can you, reading two library books a week, and practicing on a piano two hours a day?" (Laurel had not taken any "Courses" this winter.) "What are you going to do to amuse yourself, I'd like to know?"
"I've got a plan," nodded Laurel, smiling.
"Humph."
"I must have something to do, of course. Busy people are always the happiest. I'm going to be very busy. ”