The Second Fiddle Part 14

It was this wind, calling along the railway lines against the swinging train, that brought Stella to Amberley. It lifted her out of her carriage to the small, wayside station, embracing her with its welcome under shaking trees. The air was full of the earth scents of growing fields. The sky was wide and very near and without strangeness.

A porter, lurching out of the surrounding darkness, told Stella there was a car from Amberley House waiting for her. It could only be for her, because no one else was on the platform.

The station-master himself put her into it. She sank into soft cushions, and shut her eyes to feel the soundless speed. Stella had been on rare occasions in a taxi; but this creature that leaped without friction forward into the darkness, flinging a long road behind it with the ease with which an orange is peeled, was a wholly new experience. When she opened her eyes again they became gradually accustomed to the flying darkness, which was not wholly dark; trees loomed up mysteriously out of it, and the tender shapes of little hills as soft and vague as clouds.

Stella was sorry when the car stopped; she could not see the doorway of Amberley House, hidden under a ma.s.s of ivy. It opened suddenly before her into a dusky hall lighted by tall candles in silver candle-sticks.

The hall was full of shadows. There was a fragrance in it of old roses and lavender, and it was quiet. It was so quiet that Stella held her breath. She felt as if for centuries it had been still, and as if no one who had ever lived there had made a noise in it. She was afraid of the sound of her own voice.

At the farther end of the hall there was a glow of firelight on old oak panels. A door opened, and Lady Verny came toward her, very tall and stately, but with the same kind, steady eyes.

Lady Verny came all the way across the long, shadowy room to meet Stella, and held out both her hands; but when she came near, Stella saw that only her eyes were the same. Her face was incredibly older. The firm lines were blurred, the delicate color was gone. The woman who looked down at her was at the mercy of the years. Grief had forced her prematurely out of her comfortable upward path. Even her smile had changed; it carried no serenity.

"I am very glad you have come," Lady Verny said gently. "We will have tea in my room, I think, and then you must rest. I can see you have been ill."

She led the way into a room that seemed curiously like her. It was s.p.a.cious and convenient, with very few small objects in it. Even the pictures on the walls had the same quality: they were very definite, clear-colored French landscapes, graceful and reticent.

The china, on a low table by the fire, was old and valuable; but it was used every day. Lady Verny had no special occasions, and nothing that she possessed was ever too priceless or too important for use.

"I hope you did not have a very tiresome journey," she continued. "I do not like a change on so short a run, but we have not been able to arrange to have a train straight through from town. Julian was thinking of doing something about it some time ago, but the matter has dropped."

Stella noticed that as Lady Verny spoke of Julian her voice hurried a little. It did not shake; but it pa.s.sed over his name quickly as if she were afraid that it might shake.

"Since his illness he has taken less interest in local matters," she finished tranquilly.

Stella did not dare to ask if Julian was better. She did not like to speak about his interests; it seemed to her as if almost anything would be better than to say something stupid to Lady Verny about Julian.

"It was a lovely journey," she said quickly, "and I would have hated not to change at Horsham. I was so sorry it was nearly dark. Sh.e.l.ley lived there once, didn't he? I wanted to go and look for the pond where he had sailed five-pound notes because he hadn't anything else to make boats with. Amberley came much too soon; and I couldn't see anything but a bundle of dark clouds. I could only feel it, awfully friendly and kind, blowing across the fields!"

"Yes," said Lady Verny, consideringly, giving Stella her tea; "I think it is a kind little place. There is nothing dreadful about it, not even an ugly chapel, or one of those quite terrible little artist's houses,--you know the type I mean,--as uncomfortable as a three-cornered chair. The kind that clever people live in and call cottages. They've quite spoiled the country round Pulborough; but mercifully the station is inconvenient here, and a good deal of the land is Julian's. I hope you will like it,"--she met Stella's eyes with a long, questioning look,--"because I hope you will stay here for a long time."

"As long as you want me to stay," said Stella, firmly.

"We must not spoil your other opportunities for work," said Lady Verny; "that would be most unfair. I must confess to you, Miss Waring, that I am leaving the whole question very much in the air. It would be more satisfactory to have the arrangement come direct from Julian. If, as I hope, by your presence the old interest and the old questions come back to him, he will ask you to stay himself. For the present I have simply told him that you are my friend and that you have given up your secretarial work to come here for a much-needed holiday; but we must not waste your time or do anything against your interests. I could not allow that."

"It won't take very long, I expect," Stella answered, "because he would take a dislike so quickly. And if he did that, it wouldn't do, of course. We should see in a week or two. If he _doesn't_ dislike me; I can easily talk to him about Professor Paulson. I remember they had an argument once--about reindeer-moss. Your son said he had discovered it where Professor Paulson had said it didn't exist. I could bring that up quite comfortably. The mere mention of a fellow-laborer's effort stings a man into the wish to prove something or other about it; and once you start proving, secretaries follow."

"Make them follow," said Lady Verny, smiling. "I don't think he will dislike you,--we usually dislike the same people,--only Julian always goes further than I do; he dislikes them more." Then her smile faded.

"You will see him to-night at dinner," she said gravely. She could not smile again after she had said that; but she took Stella herself through the dark oak hall and up the broad, winding staircase to a little, old, square room that looked out over the garden to the flooded water-meadows.

"I don't know if you like gardens," Lady Verny said a little shyly.

"It's rather a hobby of mine. You'll see it to-morrow."

"I like even my own," said Stella, "though it only holds one plane-tree and ten cats. At least it doesn't really _hold_ the cats. They spill in and out of it in showers like the soot, only more noisily; and I pretend there's a lilac-bush in the corner."

Lady Verny stood by the door for a moment as if she were making up her mind for an immense advance, an almost dazzling plunge into confidence.

"I have a feeling," she said slowly, "as if you would make a _good_ gardener."

After she had gone, Stella opened the window, and leaned out into the garden. She could see nothing but the soft darkness, sometimes ma.s.sed in the thickness of the yew-hedges, and sometimes tenuous and spread out over the empty s.p.a.ces of the lawns.

The air blew fresh upon her face, full of sweetness and the promise of life. Stella told herself bitterly that nature was cruel; it let strong young things die, and if that didn't matter (and she sometimes thought dying didn't), nature did worse: it maimed and held youth down. But nothing in her responded to the thought that nature was cruel. A tiny crescent moon shone out between the hurrying clouds, and cast a slim shadow of silver across the dark waters. "Things are cruel," Stella said to herself, "but what is behind them is not cruel, and it must come through. And I'm little and stupid and shy; but some of it is in me for Julian, and he'll have to have it. I shan't know how to give it to him.

I shall make hideous blunders and muddles, and the more I want to give, the harder it'll be to do it. Fortunately, it does not depend on me. I can be as stupid as I like if I'm only thinking of him and only caring for him and only wanting it to come through me. Nothing can stop it but minding because I'm stupid. And as for being in love, the more I'm in it the better. For that's what we're all in really, only we're none of us in it enough. As long as I'm not in it for anything I can get out of it, everything will be all right. If I do mind, it doesn't matter if only what I want gets through to Julian."

She lay down on the bed and listened to the wind in the garden playing among the tree-tops. She listened for a long time, until she thought that the garden was upon her side, and then she heard another sound. She knew in a moment what it was; it struck straight against her heart: it was the _tap-tap_ along the pa.s.sage of wooden crutches.

CHAPTER XVII

Lady Verny and Julian were sitting in the hall when Stella joined them.

It wasn't in the least terrible meeting Julian; he had reduced his physical disabilities to the minimum of trouble for other people. He swung himself about on his crutches with an extraordinary ease, and he had taught himself to deal with his straitened powers so that he needed very little a.s.sistance; he had even controlled himself sufficiently to bear without apparent dislike the occasional help that he was forced to accept.

It was the Vernys' religion that one shouldn't make a fuss over anything larger than a broken boot-lace. Temper could be let loose over the trivial, but it must be kept if there was any grave cause for it.

Julian wished to disembarra.s.s the casual eye of pity, partly because it was a nuisance to make people feel uncomfortable, and partly because it infuriated him to be the cause of compa.s.sion. Lady Verny had not pointed this out to Stella; she had left her to draw her own inferences from her own instincts. Lady Verny did not believe in either warnings or corrections after the days of infancy were pa.s.sed.

She smiled across at Stella and said quietly:

"My son--Miss Waring."

Stella was for an instant aware of Julian's eyes dealing sharply and defensively with hers. He wanted to see if she was going to be such a fool as to pity him. She wasn't such a fool. Without a protest she let him swing himself heavily to his feet before he held out his hand to her. Her eyes met his without shrinking and without emphasis. She knew she must look rather wooden and stupid, but anything was better than looking too intelligent or too kind.

She realized that she hadn't made any mistake from the fact that Lady Verny laid down her embroidery. She would have continued it steadily if anything had gone wrong.

There was no recognition in Julian's eyes except the recognition that his mother's new friend looked as if she wasn't going to be a bother.

Stella hadn't mattered when he met her before, and she didn't matter now. She had the satisfaction of knowing that she owed his oblivion of her to her own insignificance.

"I'm sure it's awfully good of you," Julian said, "to come down here and enliven my mother when we've nothing to offer you but some uncommonly bad weather."

"I find we have one thing," Lady Verny interposed. "Miss Waring is interested in Horsham. You must motor her over there. She wants to see Sh.e.l.ley's pond."

"Do you?" asked Julian. "I'll take you with pleasure, but I must admit that I think Sh.e.l.ley was an uncommonly poor specimen; never been able to stand all that shrill, woolly prettiness of his. It sets my teeth on edge. I don't think much of a man, either, who breaks laws, and then wants his conduct to be swallowed like an angel's. Have you ever watched a dog that's funked a sc.r.a.p kick up the earth all round him and bark himself into thinking he's no end of a fine fellow in spite of it?"

"I don't believe you've read Sh.e.l.ley," cried Stella, stammering with eagerness. "I mean properly. You've only skimmed the fanciest bits. And he never saw the sense of laws. They weren't his own; he didn't break _them_. The laws he broke were only the dreadful, muddled notions of respectable people who didn't want to be inconvenienced by facts. I dare say it did make him a little shrill and frightened flying in the face of the whole world. However stupid a face it has, it's a ma.s.sive one; but he didn't, for all the fright and the defiance, funk his fight."

"Let us settle Sh.e.l.ley at the dinner-table," said Lady Verny, drawing Stella's arm into hers and leaving Julian to follow. "Personally I do not agree with either of you. I do not think Sh.e.l.ley was a coward, and I do not think that as a man he was admirable. He has always seemed to me apart from his species, like his own skylark; 'Bird _thou_ never wert.'

He was an 'unpremeditated art,' a 'clear, keen joyance,' anything you like; but he hadn't the rudiments of a man in him. He was neither tough nor tender, and he never looked a fact in the face."

"There are plenty of people to look at facts," objected Stella, "Surely we can spare one to live in clouds and light and give us, in return for a few immunities, their elemental spirit."

"People shouldn't expect to be given immunities," said Julian. "They should take 'em if they want 'em, and then be ready to pay for 'em; n.o.body is forced to run with the crowd. What I object to is their taking to their heels in the opposite direction, and then complaining of loneliness. Besides, start giving people immunities, and see what it leads to--a dozen Sh.e.l.leys without poems and G.o.d knows how many Harriets. What you want in a poet is a man who has something to say and sticks to the path while he's saying it."

"Oh, you might be talking about bishops!" cried Stella, indignantly.

"How far would you have gone yourself on your Arctic explorations if you'd stuck to paths? Why should a poet run on a given line, like an electric tram-car?"

"I think Miss Waring has rather got the better of you, Julian," said Lady Verny, smiling. "You chose an unfortunate metaphor."