Stella

“ I do not think anything in the world would ruffle her. I think if she were on board a ship that was going down inch by inch, and she knew that she was within, say, five minutes of death, she would not flinch, or drop for a moment the smile which usually rests upon her lips. That is her charm, Stella—the perfect ease and perfect grace which spring from a consciousness of her power. ”

“ Meanwhile Stella put on a smiling face to the world,—for, after all, the world smiled on her,—and she was gentle with Sir Oliver and Lady Blount. She mingled in such social life as the neighbourhood afforded—a luncheon party, a garden party, where young men fell at her feet in polite adoration, and young women put their arms round her waist and talked to her of hats. ”

“ When trembling voice brings forth that I do Stella love.
7
When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In color black why wrapp'd she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mix'd of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object best to knit and strength our sight,
Lest if no veil those brave gleams did disguise,
They sun-like should more dazzle than delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That whereas black seems Beauty's contrary,
She even if black doth make all beauties flow? ”

“ She was pale still, was this Stella, this little girl heroine of ours, but the dark look of trouble and leaden sorrow had gone, and the light of youth and youthful joy had come back to the dark eyes; the faint, ever ready smile hovered again about the red, mobile lips. "Sorrow" says Goethe, "is the refining touch to a woman's beauty," and it refined Stella's. She was lovely now, with that soft, ethereal loveliness which poets sing of, and artists paint, and we poor penman so vainly strive to describe. ”

“ Beside the pure, fresh vision of Stella he sees leaning over a black-haired, vagabond-looking man at the roulette-table at Baden-Baden the hectic ruin of a woman who has been magnificently beautiful, a woman with painted cheeks and with deep lines about her eyes and mouth,--otherwise the very image of Stella. ”

“ Stella's impassioned letters once lay in unbroken packages upon his mantel. Another star had risen and set, and sent its missives only to the ashes of his grate, and now this very night, hidden in his desk, lay long, close-written, criss-crossed, exquisite pages, the outpourings of a young and guileless and glorious nature, and they, too, lay, as did that early Stella's, unread, unheeded, almost undesired, for the man was inflamed by this dauntless woman's defiance of him, and the devil in him was urging: woo her, win her, conquer her, crush her, come what may! ”

“ Meanwhile my heart confers with Stella's beams
And is even irk'd that so sweet comedy,
By such unsuited speech should hinder'd be.
52
A strife is grown between Virtue and Love,
While each pretends that Stella must be his:
Her eyes, her lips, her all, saith Love, do this
Since they do wear his badge, most firmly prove.
But Virtue thus that title doth disprove:
That Stella (oh dear name) that Stella is
That virtuous soul, sure heir of heav'nly bliss,
Not this fair outside, which our hearts doth move ”

“ After providing herself with a few possible candidates for the marriage, the enterprising Stella spent long laborious hours making the yard surrounding the red cottage attractive, with morning-glory vines and wild-cucumber; and built herself a little temple that was very becoming to her type of beauty; and when the young men from the technical school came, in their clean collars, and dark suits, with beautiful creases down the front legs of their trousers, to call on Miss Martin, she usually chanced to be sitting in her little shrine. ”

“ Stella had never heard this tone in his voice before; it caused her strange delight, and she shyly took her seat at one end of the sofa, and then, as he flung himself down beside her, she looked up at him.
"What must you explain?" she asked.
"First, that I love you madly, that it is sickening temptation to be with you now every instant without holding you in my arms," and his voice trembled, while his blue eyes glowed. "That I do not know how to resist the wild passion which is overcoming me. I want to kiss you so terribly, more than I have ever wanted anything in my life." ”

“ Upon the countenance there was the perfection of ideal beauty. Loveliness, angelic, heavenly, was radiant upon the face, and that face was one well known to him, for Stella stood there, but Stella-glorified and immortal.
"Wonderful! Miraculous!" burst from his lips. "It is the creation of a god. It is not the work of man! Who is he? Where is he? The genius who formed this? How could it happen that it should be Stella, my daughter? Who is the artist?"
"He is here in the next apartment," said the duke, and going to the door he spoke to some one. He returned, leading the artist. ”

“ Although Stella had been in London for a day or two, this was the first time that John had seen her since the riotous June day when he had waved farewell to the train carrying her back to Southcliff. He had gone to the front gate to meet her in his ill-fitting, outgrown frock-coat, sticking-plaster still hiding the wounds on his scalp, and his heavy face white and drawn. She, in her black dress, looked a startling lily enveloped by night; her great eyes had softened from diamond into starshine. Behind her came the old people, attendant ghosts. John folded her hand in his. ”

“ Nor give each speech the full point of a groan,
The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan
Of them, who in their lips Love's standard bear;
"What he?" say they of me. "Now I dare swear,
He cannot love. No, no, let him alone."
And think so still, so Stella know my mind,
Profess indeed I do not Cupid's art;
But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find:
That his right badge is worn but in the heart;
Dumb swans, not chatt'ring pies, do lovers prove;
They love indeed, who quake to say they love. ”

“ A day was bright because Miss Stella had requested the sun to shine. Unity knew all this, and when John went out, her heart began to flutter with a wild hope. She laid her sewing in her lap and pictured the scene: the maid would open the door. “Unity, Miss Stella desires to see you.” The fairy-books said that you kissed a princess's hand. I think this must have been Unity Blake's first day-dream. It was a sign of a spirit's emancipation.
The days passed, however, without the dream coming true. But she was very humble. Why should Miss Stella want to see any one so ugly and unimportant? ”

“ Stella, perched up aloft, forgot where she was, and everything else in the world went straight out of her head as she gazed with rapture at the lovely scene that was peopled with fairies, and goblins, and wonderful beings, disporting themselves in a land that was all glitter and gold. And so the hours flew by, in a wonder of loveliness, fairy story, and fun. ”

“ Beauty is sick, but sick in so fair guise
That is that paleness Beauty's white we see,
And Joy, which is inseparate from those eyes,
Stella now learns (strange case) to weep in thee.
Love moves thy pain, and like a faithful page,
As thy looks stir, runs up and down to make
All folks press'd at thy will thy pain t'assuage.
Nature with care sweats for her darling's sake,
Knowing worlds pass, ere she enough can find
Of such heav'n stuff, to clothe so heav'nly mind. ”

“ Stella was born in one of the ugly three-deckers, close to the mill gate. She was ten years old when her father bought one of the red cottage-houses on the river-bank. She had been proud of the cottage then, and proud of it, too, as she grew older. On each side of the little porch over the front door, every spring, for years, Stella planted morning-glories and wild-cucumber vine, which climbed a string trellis of her own making. ”

“ There might well be less attractive methods of earning the daily bread and butter than to whirl through life behind Stella. One would rarely see her face, of course, but there would be such compensations as an unfailing sense of her presence, and the faint odour of her hair at times and, always, blown scraps of her laughter or shreds of her talk, and, almost always, the piping of the sweet voice that was stilled so rarely. ”

“ Then would awake the memory of Stella and myself in that ancient moonlight and of our first talk of death—two infants peering into infinity, somewhat afraid, and puzzled; of Stella making tea in the firelight, and prattling of her heart's secrets, half-seriously, half in fun; and of Stella striving to lift a very worthless man to a higher level and succeeding—yes, for the time, succeeding; and of Stella dying with a light heart, elate with dreams of Peter Blagden's future and of "a life that counted" ”

“ No fatigue, no fear of contagion, the sight of no misery, affected Stella’s courage; no labor wearied her patience, no application or effort was beyond her ability and perseverance. For souls thus constituted it is a genuine pleasure to exercise their noble faculties and be able to satisfy the thirst for doing good that devours them. Her eyes, therefore, soon began to brighten, her face to grow animated, and from time to time, like a reflection of the past, her lips to expand with the charming smile of former days. ”

“ And to Stellamaris all was a wonderland of joy.
During most of the month of August the rain fell heavily and outdoor excursions became rare events, and the world as seen from windows was a gray and dripping spectacle. But Stella, accustomed to the vast dreariness of wintry seas, found fresh beauties in the rain-swept earth. The patter of drops on leaves played new and thrilling melodies; a slant of sunshine across wet grass offered magical harmonies of colour; the unfamiliar smell of the reeking soil was grateful to her nostrils. ”

“ He imagined her riding in the Row beside him, the “mad viscount” and his lovely bride, every man there envying him his newly found treasure. Not only would she outshine every woman there in beauty, but also in the management of her horse. He pictured his friends and acquaintances clamoring for an introduction, and Stella talking to them with her sweet seriousness and total absence of coquetry and affectation. He longed, like any romantic schoolboy, for her love, which he set himself with all his heart and all his intellect to win. ”

“ The moon was not yet visible, but already the dark clouds which floated through the sky above us—for there had been rain—showed a glow of silver, telling us that she shone brightly behind the peak. Stella began to talk in her low, gentle voice, speaking to me of her life in the wilderness, how she had grown to love it, how her mind had gone on from idea to idea, and how she pictured the great rushing world that she had never seen as it was reflected to her from the books which she had read. ”

“ Here Stella's voice died away as a specially vindictive gust swept by their sheltered nook, and Sir Frederic, after pressing a tender kiss upon her lips, sprang to his feet and wrapping her closer in his ample rug, almost carried her across the deck and down to the comfortable stateroom, then leaving her with Mrs. Sinclair, he climbed the stairs once more, and walked back and forth across the slippery planks, trying to calm, if possible, the tumult of indignation and sorrow, that Stella's recital aroused within his breast. ”

“ STEALING THE THUNDER FROM IRMENGARDE I Meantime, Elsa Utterbourne’s ball had certainly proved the turning point for Stella! All at once her life seemed packed with romance, and the bewildered girl who had rebelled so bitterly against the eventlessness of everything hadn’t time half to realize the wonders that were taking place. ”

“ Stella's sweet breath the same to me did read.
Oh voice, oh face! maugre my speech's might,
Which wooed woe, most ravishing delight
E'en those sad words, e'en in sad me did breed.
59
Dear, why make you more of a dog than me?
If he do love, I burn, I burn in love;
If he wait well, I never thence would move;
If he be fair, yet but a dog can be.
Little he is, so little worth is he;
He barks, my songs thine own voice oft doth prove:
Bidden perhaps he fetcheth thee a glove,
But I unbid, fetch ev'n my soul to thee. ”

“ But as he touched her hand in greeting, a look so plainly indicative of carnal passion gleamed in every feature of his now diabolical face, that cold shivers and sensations of horror, swept through the sympathetic natures present, and doubtless, the maids and matrons, would have risen en-masse and called for their carriages, had not the sudden withdrawal of Stella's hand, brought back, as if by magic, the winning smile to the young man's countenance and transformed him again, in an instant, into the hero of the evening. ”

“ Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race.
IV. In martial sports I had my cunning tried,
And yet to break more staves did me address;
While with the people's shouts, I must confess,
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride.
When Cupid, having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
'What now, Sir Fool,' said he, 'I would no less.
Look here, I say.' I look'd, and Stella spied,
Who hard by made a window send forth light. ”

“ He laughed softly, his cheek laid to hers. "Ah, Stella!" he said. "What a queen you have been to-night! I have been watching you with the rest of the world, and I shouldn't mind laying pretty heavy odds that there isn't a single man among 'em that doesn't envy me."
Stella drew a deep breath as if she laboured against some oppression. "It's nice to be envied, isn't it?" she said. ”