CHAPTER XVI
There are two winds in March; one comes in like a tight-lipped school-master set on punishment. It is frequently accompanied by dust, sunshine, and influenza. It has all the cold of winter, and acts as if life could be produced solely by formidable harshness.
But there is another wind, a mild, sensitive wind which carries the secrets of the spring—a wind that wanders and sings on sunless days, penetrating the hard crust of the earth as softly and as inveterately as love, a wind that opens while its forceful brother shuts.
It was this wind, calling along the railway lines against the swinging train, that brought Stella to Amberley. It lifted her out of her carriage to the small, wayside station, embracing her with its welcome under shaking trees. The air was full of the earth scents of growing fields. The sky was wide and very near and without strangeness.
A porter, lurching out of the surrounding darkness, told Stella there was a car from Amberley House waiting for her. It could only be for her, because no one else was on the platform.
The station-master himself put her into it. She sank into soft cushions, and shut her eyes to feel the soundless speed. Stella had been on rare occasions in a taxi; but this creature that leaped without friction forward into the darkness, flinging a long road behind it with the ease with which an orange is peeled, was a wholly new experience. When she opened her eyes again they became gradually accustomed to the flying darkness, which was not wholly dark; trees loomed up mysteriously out of it, and the tender shapes of little hills as soft and vague as clouds.
Stella was sorry when the car stopped; she could not see the doorway of Amberley House, hidden under a mass of ivy. It opened suddenly before her into a dusky hall lighted by tall candles in silver candle-sticks.
The hall was full of shadows. There was a fragrance in it of old roses and lavender, and it was quiet. It was so quiet that Stella held her breath. She felt as if for centuries it had been still, and as if no one who had ever lived there had made a noise in it. She was afraid of the sound of her own voice.
At the farther end of the hall there was a glow of firelight on old oak panels. A door opened, and Lady Verny came toward her, very tall and stately, but with the same kind, steady eyes.
Lady Verny came all the way across the long, shadowy room to meet Stella, and held out both her hands; but when she came near, Stella saw that only her eyes were the same. Her face was incredibly older. The firm lines were blurred, the delicate color was gone. The woman who looked down at her was at the mercy of the years. Grief had forced her prematurely out of her comfortable upward path. Even her smile had changed; it carried no serenity.