There are two winds in March; one comes in like a tight-lipped
school-master set on punishment. It is frequently accompanied by dust,
sunshine, and influenza. It has all the cold of winter, and acts as if
life could be produced solely by formidable harshness.
But there is another wind, a mild, sensitive wind which carries the
secrets of the spring--a wind that wanders and sings on sunless days,
penetrating the hard crust of the earth as softly and as inveterately as
love, a wind that opens while its forceful brother shuts.
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 mass 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
spacious 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 passed 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. Shelley 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 massed in
the thickness of the yew-hedges, and sometimes tenuous and spread out
over the empty spaces 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 passage of wooden crutches.