Part 1 (2/2)

Her smile soothed their feelings, and in her eyes reigned always that other Stella who lived behind her wits, a gay, serene, and friendly Stella, who did not know that she was a lady and never forgot that she was a human being.

Theoretically there is nothing but business in a business office, but practically in every smallest detail there is the pressure of personal influence. What gets done or, even more noticeably, what is left undone, is poised upon an inadmissible principle, the desire to please.

The office watched Stella, tested her, judged her, and once and for all made up its mind to please her.

Stella knew nothing at all about this probation. She only knew all about the office boy's mother, and where the girl typists spent their holidays, and when, if all went well, Mr. Belk would be able to marry his young lady. Mistakes and panic, telegrams and telephones, slipped into her hands, and were unraveled with the rapidity with which silk yields to expert fingers. She always made the stupidest clerk feel that mistakes, like the bites of a mosquito, might happen to any one even while she was making him see how to avoid them in future. She had the touch which takes the sting from small personal defeats. She always saw the person first and the defeat afterward.

Her day's work was a game of patience and skill, and she played it as she used to play chess with her father. It was a long game and sometimes it was a tiring one, but hardly a moment of it was not sheer drama; and the moment the town hall door swung behind her she forgot her munic.i.p.al juggling and started the drama of play.

On Thursday afternoon she stood for a moment considering her course.

There was the Underground, which was always quickest, or there was the drive above the golden summer dust on the swinging height of a motor-bus. She decided upon the second alternative, and slipped into infinity. She was cut off from duty, surrounded by strangers, unmoored from her niche in the world.

This was the moment of her day which Stella liked best; in it she could lose her own ident.i.ty. She let her hands rest on her lap and her eyes on the soft green of the new-born leaves. She hung balanced on her wooden seat between earth and sky, on her way to Russian music.

The brief and tragic youth of London trees was at its loveliest.

Kensington Gardens poured past her like a golden flame. The gra.s.s was as fresh as the gra.s.s of summer fields, swallows flitted over it, and the broad-shouldered elms were wrapped delicately in a mist of green.

Hyde Park Corner floated beneath her; the bronze horses of victory, compact and st.u.r.dy, trundled out of a cloudless sky. St George's Hospital, sun-baked and brown, glowed like an ancient palace of the Renaissance. The traffic surged down Hamilton Place and along Piccadilly as close packed as migratory birds. The tower of Westminster Cathedral dropped its alien height into an Italian blue sky; across the vista of the green park and all down Piccadilly the clubs flashed past her, vast, silver s.p.a.ces of comfort reserved for men, full of men. Stella did not know very much about men who lived in clubs. Cicely said they were very wicked and danced the tango and didn't want women to have votes; but Stella thought they looked as if they had attractions which rivaled these disabilities.

Probably she would see some of them less kaleidoscopically at the opera later.

Even men who danced the tango went to hear Chaliapine. It wasn't only his voice; he was a rage, a prairie fire. All other conversation became burned stubble at his name.

Piccadilly Circus shot past her like a bed of flowers.

The City was very hot, and all the world was in the streets, expansive and genial. It was the hour when work draws to an end and night is still far off. Pleasure had stretched down the scale and included workers.

People who didn't dance the tango bought strawberries and flowers off barrows for wonderful prices to take home to their children.

In the queue extending half-way down Drury Lane, Eurydice, pa.s.sionate and heavy-eyed, was waiting for Stella.

”If you hadn't come soon,” she said, drawing Stella's arm through her own, ”something awful would have happened to me. I got a messenger-boy to stand here for an hour to keep your place. The suspense has been agony, like waiting for the guillotine.”

”But, O Eurydice dear, I do hope you will enjoy it!” Stella pleaded.

”I shall enjoy it, yes,” said Eurydice, gloomily, ”if I can bear it. I don't suppose you understand, but when you feel things as poignantly as I do, almost anything is like the guillotine. It is the death of something, even if it's only suspense. Besides, he may not be what I think him. I expect the opening of heaven.”

Eurydice usually expected heaven to open, and this is sometimes rather hard upon the openings of less grandiose places.

A stout woman in purple raised an efficient elbow like an oar and dug it sharply into Stella's side.

”Oh, Stella, wouldn't it be awful if I fainted before the door opens!”

whispered Eurydice.

”The doors are opening,” said Stella. ”People have begun to plunge with umbrellas.”

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