Later Stella wrote:
Eurydice dearest:
It's the strangest household, or else, perhaps, everybody else's
is. You never see anybody doing anything, and yet everything gets
done. It's all ease and velvet and bells; and yet in spite of
nothing being a minute late, you never notice the slightest hurry.
It isn't clockwork; it's more like the stars in their courses. I
always thought being properly waited on made people helpless; it
would me in ten minutes. I can see myself sinking into a cream-fed
cushion, but the Vernys sit bolt upright, and no servant they
possess can do any given thing as well for them as they can do it
for themselves.
I have breakfast in my room, with a robin, and the window open--oh,
open on to the sharpest paradise!
While I lie in bed I can see an old, moss-covered barn which always
manages to have a piece of pink sky behind it and a black elm bough
in front. It's a wonderful barn, as old as any hill, and with all
the colors of the rainbow subservient to it. That's one window; the
other two look over the garden.
There's a terrace, and a lawn out of which little glens and
valleys wander down the hillside into the water-meadows, and
there's a lake drowned out by the water, with swans more or less
kept in it by a hedge of willows.
The water-meadows are more beautiful than all the little shiny
clouds that race across the valley. Sometimes they're like a silver
tray, with green islands and wet brown trees on them; and sometimes
they are a traveling mist; and then the sun slants out (I haven't
seen it full yet), and everything's blue--the frailest, pearliest
blue.
Yesterday was quite empty, with only its own light, and when
evening came the water-meadows and the little hills were lost in
amethyst.
I haven't said anything about the downs. I can't. We walk on them
in the afternoon. At least we walk along the lane that goes through
the village (it's full of mud; but one gets quite fond of mud), and
then when you feel the short turf under you, and the fields drop
down, you go up into the sky and float.
One begins so well, too. At breakfast there's such beautiful china,
butter in a lordly dish, always honey, and often mushrooms.
Everything tastes as if it came fresh out of the sky.
I can do exactly as I like all day. Nobody's plans conflict with
any one else's. That's partly being rich and partly being sensible;
it's quite wonderful how easy life is if you're both. There's a
special room given to me, with a piano and books; and if I want
Lady Verny, I can find her in the garden.
I can see her out of my window now; she's wearing a garment that's
a cross between a bathing-dress and a dressing-gown, enormous
gauntlets, and one of Sir Julian's old caps. There _are_ gardeners,
especially one called Potter. (Whenever anything goes wrong Lady
Verny shakes her head and says, "Ah, that's the Potter's thumb!")
But you never see them. She's always doing something in the garden.
Half the time I can't discover what; but she just smiles at me and
says, "Nature's so untidy," or, "The men need looking after." Both
Lady Verny and Sir Julian are very serious over their servants. In
a way they're incredibly nice to them, they seem to have them so
much on their minds. They're always discussing their relatives or
their sore throats, and they give very polite, plain orders; but
then just when you're thinking how heavenly it must be to work for
them, they say something that chills you to the bone. One of the
housemaids broke a china bowl yesterday, and came to Lady Verny,
saying:
"If you please, m' Lady, I didn't mean to do it."
"I should hope not," Lady Verny said in a voice like marble. "If
you had _meant_ to do it, I should hardly keep you in the house;
but your not having criminal tendencies is not an excuse for
culpable carelessness."
Sir Julian's worse because his eyes are harder; he must have caught
them from one of his icebergs. But the servants stay with them
forever, and when one of the grooms had pneumonia in the winter,
Sir Julian sat up with him for three nights because the man was
afraid of dying, and it quieted him to have his master in the
room.
I'm beginning to work in the garden myself, the smells are so nice,
and the dogs like it. Lady Verny has a spaniel and two
fox-terriers, and Sir Julian a very fierce, unpleasant Arctic
monster, with a blunt nose like a Chow, and eyes red with temper
and a thirst for blood.
He's always locked up when he isn't with Sir Julian. If he wasn't,
I'm sure he'd take the other three dogs as hors-d'oeuvre, and
follow them up with the gardeners.
I don't know what he does all day. Sir Julian I mean; the Arctic
dog growls. They never turn up till tea-time; then they disappear
again, and come back at dinner. At least Sir Julian does. The
Arctic dog (his name is Ostrog) is not allowed at meals, because he
thinks everything in the room ought to be killed first.
After dinner I play chess with Sir Julian. He's been quite
different to me since he found I could; before he seemed to think I
was something convenient for his mother, like a
pocket-handkerchief. He was ready to pick me up and give me back to
her if I fell about, but I didn't have a life of my own.
Now he often speaks to me as if I were really there. They're both
immensely kind and good to everybody in the neighborhood, but they
see as little of people as possible.
They're not a bit religious, though they always go to church, and
Lady Verny reads Montaigne--beautifully bound, like Sir Thomas à
Kempis--during the sermon. A great deal of the land belongs to
them, and I suppose they could use a lot of influence if they
chose. I always dislike people having power over other human
beings; but the Vernys never use it to their own advantage. In nine
cases out of ten they don't use it at all. I heard the vicar
imploring Sir Julian to turn a drunken tenant out of a cottage, as
his example was bad for the village. But Sir Julian wouldn't even
agree to speak to him. "I always believe in letting people go to
the devil in their own way," he said. "If you try to stop 'em, they
only go to him in yours. Of course I don't mean you, Parson. It's
your profession to give people a lead. But I couldn't speak about
his morals to a man who owed me three years' rent."
I expect I shall have to come back next week to the town hall.
Thank Mr. Travers so much for saying I may stay on longer, but I
really couldn't go on taking my salary when I'm bursting with
health and doing nothing. I'll wait two more days before writing to
him, but I must confess I'd rather have all my teeth extracted than
mention Professor Paulson to Sir Julian.
I haven't seen the slightest desire for work in him; but, then, I
haven't seen any desire in him at all except a suicidal fancy for
driving a dangerous mare in a high dog-cart. He never speaks of
himself or of the war, and he is about as personal as a mahogany
sideboard.
Lady Verny isn't much easier to know, though she seems to like
talking to me. I asked her to call me Stella the other day, and she
put down her trowel and looked at me, as if she thought it wasn't
my place to make such a suggestion; then she said, "Well, perhaps
I will." I wish we'd been taught whose place things are; it would
be so much simpler when you are with people who have places. But
Lady Verny doesn't dislike me, because I've seen her with people
she dislikes. She's much more polite then, and never goes on with
anything. Last night when I was playing chess with Sir Julian (it
was an awful fight, for he's rather better than I am, though I
can't let him know it) she said to him, "I hope you are not tiring
Stella."
He looked up sharply, as if he was awfully surprised to hear her
saying my name, and then he gave me a queer little smile as if he
were pleased with me. I believe they're fond of each other, but
I've never seen them show any sign of affection.
But, O Eurydice, though they're awfully charming and interesting
and dear, they're terribly unhappy. You feel it all the time--a
dumb, blind pain that they can't get over or understand, and that
nothing will ever induce them to show. They aren't a bit like the
Arctic dog, who is always disagreeable unless he has a bone and Sir
Julian. You know where you are with the Arctic dog.
Tell Mr. Travers I'll write directly I have fixed a date for my
return.
Your ever-loving, disheveled, enthralled, perturbed, unfinished
STELLA.
P.S. I suppose as a family we all talk too much; we over-say
things, and that makes them seem shallow. If you say very little,
it comes out in chunks and sounds solid. You remember those
dreadful old early-Saxon people we read once who never used
adjectives? I think we ought to look them up.