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Transcriber’s Note
When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has
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signs=.
Some corrections have been made to the printed text. These are listed in
a second transcriber’s note at the end of the text.
A YELLOW ASTER
BY
IOTA
“And if this fought-for climax _is_ ever reached
and science, creeping along the path of experiment,
so invades the realm of Nature that a blue chrysanthemum
or A Yellow Aster can be produced at
will, the question still remains, has Nature been
made more beautiful thereby?”
_IN THREE VOLUMES_
VOL. III
London 1894
HUTCHINSON & CO.
34 PATERNOSTER ROW
PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND)
BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND)
AND
TALBOT HOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET
LONDON, W.C.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER XXXI. 1
CHAPTER XXXII. 11
CHAPTER XXXIII. 29
CHAPTER XXXIV. 45
CHAPTER XXXV. 66
CHAPTER XXXVI. 84
CHAPTER XXXVII. 107
CHAPTER XXXVIII. 124
CHAPTER XXXIX. 140
CHAPTER XL. 152
CHAPTER XLI. 160
CHAPTER XLII. 171
CHAPTER XLIII. 185
CHAPTER XLIV. 192
A YELLOW ASTER.
CHAPTER XXXI.
GWEN lost no time in conducting her projected series of experiments, she
carried them on conscientiously, and with an assumption of spontaneity
that gave her husband a high opinion of her powers of self-government.
As for the results on Gwen herself, she found them nil, she failed in
experiencing one thrill, or the ghost of a tremor.
She had an opportunity about this time of judging of the effects on the
situation of a sudden danger to her husband. They had driven into the
station to meet a parcel of books from London. They were early, and
employed their time in watching the goings-on of an imp in human form
wrestling with its nurse at one end of the platform.
“What an inestimable blessing it would be,” said Humphrey reflectively,
“if the Lord would be pleased to remove that creature. Look at it,
biting and screaming like a horse!”
“Mr. Drew says the child is half idiotic.”
“If it’s not, the nurse soon will be—Phew—take the reins!”
She only knew she had them in a bundle in her hands, and Humphrey was
off, then there struck on her ear a crash of sound, and through it one
thin high shriek and a long wailing.
For a second her eyes floated in darkness, then the express thundered on
and she could see a confused mass of men and women bending down over
something.
“That distinct definite shriek was awful!” Gwen found herself thinking,
with curious composure, though she knew perfectly well that her husband
had very likely lost his life to save that of a congenital idiot.
He was only stunned, however, and the infant had got off scot-free.
When he came to her, Gwen was very white in sheer disgust at her own
want of emotion, and Strange knew as distinctly as if she had told him
the cause of her pallor.
He would not wait for the books, but turned the horses’ heads homewards
and set off at a smart trot.
“That amiable infant,” he said, when they had cleared the village, “it
seems, felt itself moved to commit suicide in order to spite its nurse;
it has been a long-standing threat, the woman says. It threw itself on
its stomach before the in-coming train. By Jove! It was a close shave,
we only got off by the skin of our teeth!”
She would have liked to touch him, to let her eyes melt in his sight, to
make her lips tremble, but she could not for the life of her. She knew
he had acted like a hero, but as she had known before, he couldn’t do
any other thing when the call came; it did not seem in any way to alter
matters.
Then she began to speculate as to what would have happened if perchance
he had _not_ come off by the skin of his teeth. She looked curiously at
him and wondered.
“I haven’t a notion,” she concluded at last, and she was silent for a
long time and very pale.
“Was the game worth the candle?” she asked, as they went through the
terrace gates. “You had said a minute before, the Lord would do well to
remove the child.”
“Probably not, but when a man happens to be in a desperate hurry he
can’t stop to go all round a question. I must go to the stables myself,
there is something wrong with Boccaccio’s off hoof. Shall I help you up
the steps—you look white?”
“No, thank you—I wish—I wish—” she said slowly; she never finished her
sentence, but went wearily into the house without turning her head.
“I wish to Heaven I knew what he thinks of it all—how much he minds!”
she whispered to herself, with noiseless passion, as soon as she got
into her room.
“Even in this dead-level life a big thing has come and gone, and has
left me precisely as it found me.”
She smote her hands together sharply, then she rang for her maid; she
dared not be alone, her control over herself was on its last legs.
If she had looked into Strange’s den half an hour later she might have
got some idea of how much he minded, but he ate a good dinner and
afterwards tied flies with a steady hand, and made several quite decent
jokes as he watched her standing at the open window, looking with
careless interest at his work.
She wore a Watteau gown of pale primrose, with purple pansies scattered
here and there over it; she held a great yellow fan in her hand and
stood bathed in the yellow twilight.
“If I boxed her ears,” he thought, “I wonder what she would do or say?
Any way it couldn’t hurt her more than those devilish experiments of
hers hurt me. I have a good mind to try—if her ears weren’t altogether
so perfect I swear I would. Ah, my good girl, you are playing with
fire!”
He paused to fix a wren’s tail feather in its place.
“There may come a time, little fool, when I may get tired of this game
and resort to active measures, and then you’ll find your bit of hell,
“‘Dann willst du weine, du liebe kleine!’”
In a moment of abstraction he sang it aloud, and gave Gwen a
considerable start.
“Do you ever sew, Gwen?”
“No, but I can, I believe, in a fashion.”
“I wish you would then, it might make you look a bit human.”
“Good gracious! I am not divine again, am I? I thought I had shut all
that away with my white tea-gown. Perhaps you would like to call Tolly?”
“Oh, dear, no! You would not conduce to his soul’s salvation in the
least. On the contrary, I was thinking you had a marked resemblance to
Lilith.”
“Oh, Lilith! I am flattered certainly. I think I will go and get some
work.”
Strange laughed, and went on tying feathers on hooks.
“Ha, that touched her up!” he muttered.
When she was half up the stairs she stopped and stamped:
“How dare he say—say with a laugh what I won’t even dare to think!”
However, she was soon back again in her yellow twilight, but sitting
this time, and with a big bundle of coarse flannel in her hand that she
began to stitch with demure diligence.
“What in the name of fortune is that!” said Strange, after taking steady
stock of it.
“I don’t really know, I got it in Eliza’s room—I think it is a
jelly-bag, it’s just like one I once made for Mrs. Fellowes, and spoiled
disgracefully. I sewed up the wrong end!”
Strange investigated it with much interest.
“My good girl,” he said at last, “do you know what you are doing? You
are sewing an old woman’s petticoat.”
He gave a laugh that reached Tolly, as he sat varnishing boots
downstairs.
“Bless ’em, the pair of ’em,” he remarked, “and as ’appy together as if
they lived in four rooms! Queer, too! as the aristocracy’s mostly gone
to the dogs in the domestic line!”