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."