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 assistance; 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 disembarrass 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 compassion. 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 passed.
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
Shelley's pond."
"Do you?" asked Julian. "I'll take you with pleasure, but I must admit
that I think Shelley 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 scrap 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 Shelley," 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 massive one; but
he didn't, for all the fright and the defiance, funk his fight."
"Let us settle Shelley 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 Shelley 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;
nobody 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 Shelleys without poems and God 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."
"Not a bit of it," said Julian, with a gleam of amusement. "I chose a
jolly good one, and she's improved it. You can go some distance with a
decent poet, but you can't with your man, Miss Waring. He twiddles up
into the sky before you've got your foot on the step."
"That's a direct challenge," said Lady Verny. "I think after dinner we
must produce something of Shelley's in contradiction. Can you think of
anything solid enough to bear Julian?"
"Yes," said Stella. "All the way here in the train I was thinking of one
of Shelley's poems. Have you read it--'The Ode to the West Wind'?"
"No," said Julian, smiling at her; "but it doesn't sound at all
substantial. You started your argument on a cloud, and you finish off
with wind. The Lord has delivered you into my hand."
"Not yet, Julian," said Lady Verny. "Wait till you've heard the poem."
It did not seem in the least surprising to Stella to find herself, half
an hour later, sitting in a patch of candle-light, on a high-backed oak
chair, saying aloud without effort or self-consciousness Shelley's "Ode
to the West Wind."
Neither Lady Verny nor Julian ever made a guest feel strange. There was
in them both an innate courtesy, which was there to protect the feelings
of others. They did not seem to be protecting Stella. They left her
alone, but in the act of doing so they set her free from criticism. Lady
Verny took up her embroidery, and Julian, sitting in the shadow of an
old oak settle, contentedly smoked a cigarette. He did not appear to be
watching Stella, but neither her movements nor her expressions escaped
him. She was quite different from any one he had seen before. She wore a
curious little black dress, too high to be smart, but low enough to set
in relief her white, slim throat. She carried her head badly, so that it
was difficult to see at first the beauty of the lines from brow to chin.
She had a curious, irregular face, like one of the more playful and less
attentive angels in a group round a Botticelli Madonna. She had no
color, and all the life of her face was concentrated in her gray,
far-seeing eyes. Julian had never seen a pair of eyes in any face so
alert and fiery. They were without hardness, and the fire in them melted
easily into laughter. But they changed with the tones of her voice,
with the rapid words she said, so that to watch them was almost to know
before she spoke what her swift spirit meant. Her voice was unfettered
music, low, with quick changes of tone and intonation.
[Illustration: Her voice was unfettered music]
Stella was absorbed in her desire to give Julian a sense of Shelley. She
wanted to make him see that beyond the world of fact, the ruthless,
hampering world of which he was a victim, there was another, finer
kingdom where no disabilities existed except those that a free spirit
set upon itself.
She was frightened of the sound of her own voice; but after the first
verse, the thought and the wild music steadied her. She lost the sense
of herself, and even the flickering firelight faded; she felt out once
more in the warm, swinging wind, with its call through the senses to the
soul. The first two parts of the poem, with their sustained and
tremendous imagery, said themselves without effort or restraint. It was
while she was in the halcyon third portion of
"The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,"
that it shot through Stella's mind how near she was to the tragic
unfolding of a fettered spirit which might be the expression of Julian's
own. She dared not stop; the color rushed over her face. By an enormous
effort she kept her voice steady and flung into it all the
unconsciousness she could muster. He should not dream she thought of
him; and yet as she said:
"Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bowed
One too like thee--tameless, and swift, and proud."
it seemed to her that she was the voice of his inner soul stating his
bitter secret to the world. A pulse beat in her throat and struggled
with her breath, her knees shook under her; but the music of her low,
grave voice went on unfalteringly:
"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is.
What if my leaves are falling, like its own!"
Lady Verny laid down her embroidery. Julian had not moved. There was no
sound left in the world but Stella's voice.
She moved slowly toward the unconquerable end,
"Oh, Wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"
All the force of her heart throbbed through Shelley's words. They were
only words, but they had the universe behind them. Nobody spoke when she
had finished.
She herself was the first to move. She gave a quick, impatient sigh, and
threw out her hands with a little gesture of despair.
"I can't give it to you," she said, "but it's _there_. Read it for
yourself! It's worth breaking laws for; I think it's worth being broken
for."
Julian answered her. He spoke carefully and a little stiffly.
"I don't think I agree with you," he said. "Nothing is worth being
broken for."
Stella bowed her head. She was aware of an absolute and appalling sense
of exhaustion and of an inner failure more terrible than any physical
collapse.
It was as if Julian had pushed aside her soul.
"Still, I think you must admit, Julian," Lady Verny said quietly, "that
'The Ode to the West Wind' is an admirable poem. I'm afraid, my dear,
you have tired yourself in saying it for us. I know the poem very well,
but I have never either understood or enjoyed it so much before. Do you
not think you had better go to bed? Julian will excuse us. I find I am a
little tired myself."
Stella rose to her feet uncertainly. She was afraid that Julian would
get up again and light their candles; but for a moment he did not move.
He was looking at her reconsideringly, as if something in his mind was
recognizing something in hers; then he dragged himself up, as she had
feared he would, and punctiliously lighted their candles.
"It's rather absurd not having electric light here, isn't it?" he
observed, handing Stella her candle. "But we can't make up our minds to
it. We like candle-light with old oak. I'm not prepared to give in about
your fellow Shelley; but I confess I like that poem better than the
others I have read. You must put me up to some more another time."
If she had made one of her frightful blunders, he wasn't going to let
her see it. His smile was perfectly kind, perfectly impenetrable. She
felt as if he were treating her like an intrusive child. Lady Verny
said nothing more about the poem; but as she paused outside Stella's
door she leaned over her and very lightly kissed her cheek.
It was as if she said: "Yes, I know you made a mistake; but go on making
them. I can't. I'm too like him; so that the only thing for me to do is
to leave him alone. But perhaps one day one of your mistakes may reach
him; and if they can't, nothing can."
Stella shivered as she stood alone before the firelight. Everything in
the room was beautiful, the chintz covers, the thick, warm carpet, the
gleam of the heavy silver candle-sticks. The furniture was not chosen
because it had been suitable. It was suitable because it had been chosen
long ago. It had grown like its surroundings into a complete harmony,
and all this beauty, all this warm, old, shining polish of inanimate
objects and generations of good manners, covered an ache like a hollow
tooth. Nobody could get down to what was wrong because they were too
well bred; and was it very likely that they were going to let Stella?
She would annoy Julian, she had probably annoyed him to-night; but would
she ever reach him? In her mind she had been able to think of him as
near her; but now that she was in the same house, she felt as if she
were on the other side of unbridged space. He was frightening, too; he
was so much handsomer than she remembered, and so much more alive. It
was inconceivable that he should ever want to work with her.
She sat down before an oval silver mirror and looked at her face. It
seemed to her that she was confronted by an empty little slab without
light. She gave it a wintry smile before she turned away from it.
"I don't suppose he'll ever want anything of you," she said to herself,
"except to go away."