Part 19 (2/2)
”Do you know,” she asked in a low voice, ”what was the saddest thing I ever saw--the saddest and the most terrible?”
”No,” he said, turning his eyes carefully back to the silver birches; ”but I have an idea that it was something that happened to somebody else.”
”Yes,” said Stella; ”it happened to a sea-gull. It was the only time I ever went to the sea. Eurydice had been ill, and I went away with her. I think I was fourteen. I had gone out alone after tea on to the cliffs when I saw a motionless sea-gull at the very edge. I walked close up to it. It was as still as a stone, and when I came up, O Julian, one of its wings was broken! It could not fly again. Its eyes were searching the sea with such despair in them; it knew it could not fly again. I picked it up and carried it home. We did everything we could for it, but it died--like that, without ever changing the despair in its eyes--because it could not fly.”
”Lucky brute to be able to die,” said Julian under his breath. Stella said nothing. ”Why did you tell me?” he asked after a pause. ”Any lesson attached to it?”
She shook her head.
”You're not crying?” he asked suspiciously. Then he looked at her. She was sitting very still, biting her lips to keep her tears back.
”You really mustn't, Stella!” he urged in a queer, soft voice she had never heard him use before. ”I'm not a sea-gull and I'm not dying, and I'm not even a stone.”
”No,” she whispered, ”but you're just like the sea-gull: you won't share your pain.”
”Look here,” said Julian, ”I--you--Would you mind sitting on that log over there,--it's quite dry,--just opposite? Thanks. Now I can talk more easily. I want you to remember that I'm a million times better off than most people. What troubles me isn't what the vicar calls my affliction.
I'm rather proud of what I'm able to do with a pair of crutches in six months. It's being out of it; that's what set me off on those Canadian chaps. I miss the idea that I might be in that kind of thing, rather.
You see, I feel quite well. I'll settle down to it in time, and I won't shut you out, if you'll remember not to let me--you're most awfully innocent, aren't you? D'you mind telling me how old you are?”
”Twenty-eight,” said Stella. ”But I'm not really innocent. I think I know all the horrible things.”
Julian laughed ruefully. ”You wouldn't see them coming though,” he said; ”and, besides, the things that aren't innocent are by no means always horrible. However, that's not what I was going to say. If we're to be friends at all, and it's not particularly easy even for me to live in the same house with you and not be friends, you'll have to help me pretty considerably.”
”How shall I help you?” Stella asked eagerly. ”I have wanted to, you know. I mean that I did sometimes think you wanted to be friends--as Mr. Travers did when he tried to become human because his cat died. I haven't told you about that; it made him see how important it was. And when you didn't want to be friendly, I tried not to bother you; I just went on with the work. That _was_ the best way, wasn't it?”
”Yes,” said Julian, carefully. ”You did the work uncommonly well, my dear, and you never bothered me in that way. I'm afraid I don't quite follow Mr. Travers. I suppose he is the town clerk, isn't he? He may have meant the same thing that I do; but I should have thought it would have been--well--simpler for him. I don't know how to explain to you what I mean. You remember Marian?” Stella nodded, ”I came a cropper over Marian,” Julian explained. ”She behaved extraordinarily well. No one could possibly blame her; but she wasn't exactly the kind of woman I'd banked on, and I had banked on her pretty heavily. When I saw my mistake, I understood that I wasn't fit for marriage, and I became reconciled to it. I mean I accepted the idea thoroughly. It would be tying a woman to a log. But I don't want to start feeling just yet--any kind of feeling. Even nice, mild, pitying friends.h.i.+p like yours stings.
D'you understand?”
”I'm not mild and I'm not pitying,” said Stella, quietly. ”And you don't only shut me out; you shut out everybody. Why, you won't even let yourself go over your old polar bears in the book!”
”I can't afford to let myself go,” said Julian, ”even to the extent of a polar bear--with you.”
”Just because I'm a woman?” asked Stella, regretfully.
”If you like, you may put it that way,” agreed Julian; ”and as to the rest of the world, it's very busy just at present fighting Germans. All the men I like are either dead or will be soon. What's the use of getting 'em down here to look at a broken sign-post? I'd rather keep to myself till I've got going. I will get going again, and you'll help me, if you'll try to remember what I've just told you.”
”Oh, I shall _remember_ it,” replied Stella, hurriedly; ”only I don't quite know what it is. Still, I dare say, if I think it over, I shall find out. At any rate, I'm _very, very_ glad you'll let me help you. Of course I think you're all wrong about the other men. You think too much of the outside of things. I dare say it's better than thinking too little, as we do in our family. Besides, you have such a lovely house and live so tidily. Still, I think it's a mistake. The men wouldn't see your crutches half as much as they'd see _you_. The things that matter most are always behind what anybody sees. Even all this beauty isn't half as beautiful as what's behind it--the spirit of the life that creates it, and brings it back again.”
”And the ugliness,” asked Julian, steadily, ”the ugliness we've just been talking about over there, that long line of it cutting through France like a mortal wound, drawing the life-blood of Europe,--what's behind that?”
”Don't you see?” she cried, leaning toward him eagerly. ”Exactly the same thing--life! All this quietness that reproduces what it takes away, only always more beautifully. Don't you think, while we see here the pa.s.sing of the great procession of spring, behind in the invisible, where their poured-out souls have rushed to, is a greater procession still, forming for us to join? That even the ugliness is only an awful way out into untouched beauty, like a winter storm that breaks the ground up for the seed to grow?”
”I can see that _you_ see it,” said Julian, gently. ”I can't see anything else just now. You'd better cut along back to the house; you'll be late for lunch. Tell my mother I'm not coming--and--and try not to think I'm horrid if I'm not always friendly with you. I sha'n't be so unfriendly as I sound.”
”I don't believe you know,” said Stella, consideringly, ”how very nice I always think you--”
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