Chapter XXIX: Diana's Story

It is a curious position, that in which I find myself this July afternoon, sitting on the edge of a fountain, with a future duke in tears at my feet, not two hundred yards away from a gay and select crowd, any member or members of whom may at any moment come suddenly upon us without warning. And I, who have all along hugged my bitter secret to my heart of hearts, am about to confide it to this boy, who only one short half-hour ago would have seemed to me the most impossible recipient for such a confidence.

The little white cloudlets are sailing aloft in the blue heaven, a tiny breeze stirs the topmost leaves of the big trees, the fountain sparkles in the sun and comes plashing musically down again into the broad basin, and I, plucking up heart, force out the words that are to console my boy lover and make him see reason.

"I want you to believe," I say, laying my hand on his arm, while the tears spring into my eyes, "that I would not for the world give you pain willingly. I know myself" (and my voice falters) "how bitter it is to love in vain."

"What!" he cries, looking up into my face; "do you mean that you love some one else?"

It is hard, bitterly hard, to say it, but his eager eyes compel the words out of me.

"Yes," I answer.

"Well," he cries, starting up wrathfully, "you have kept it dark very carefully, I must say. Pray" (trying to be sarcastic, but failing utterly), "may I be privileged to know who is my rival?"

"You need not know," I answer, slowly, "since there is no more chance of my marrying him than of my marrying you."

"Is he married, then?"

"Married!" I repeat, shocked; "of course not! How could one care for a married man?"

"I have heard of such things," he remarks, bitterly. "Well, then, if he is not married, what obstacle can there be to his marrying you?"

I avert my face, to hide, if may be, the sudden traitorous color that dyes my cheeks.

"He does not want to."

There is a pause, during which I watch the movements of a stray gold-fish in the water whilst my face recovers its normal tint.

"_He does not want to!_" echoes Lord Seldon, at last. "Then, in heaven's name" (coming round and seating himself beside me), "are you going to give up everything in life for a man who does not care for you? Why, you can't go on caring about him forever; nobody does: people are bound to get over that sort of thing in time" (unconsciously arguing against his own cause). "Well" (eagerly), "if you have no heart, have you no ambition? Don't you care to be a duchess? I know," he says, his bright face flushing, "it sounds very snobbish to remind you of that, but surely it must go for something."

"What!" I say, looking at him, "would you be content that I should take you without loving you, just because some day you may be a duke?"

"Lots of women would," he answers, glumly. "No, of course I should not be content; but, oh, darling" (looking up at me with honest love in his blue eyes), "I would rather you took me for that than not at all. Give me a month, two months, let me try to make you love me, and then, if I fail, I swear to you upon my honor, I will take all the blame to myself if you find you can't like me."

"It is no use," I cry, feeling the ground slipping away from under me. "Do not pain me by saying any more: be generous, and believe me when I tell you that it is utterly, utterly impossible."

He looks at me with eyes in which anger and incredulity are equally blended.

"Do you mean to say positively," he asks, forcing the words out slowly, "that you refuse me?--refuse me for good and all?"

"Do not put it in that way," I say, rising to go. "Forget that you ever asked me, and believe that I would not for the world have given you pain willingly. Come" (laying my hand on his arm), "let us go back to Mrs. Warrington."

For the first time he thinks of his appearance. He looks down at the faint green stains on his clothes, and passes his hand over his hair.

"I can't go back among those people," he says, with hurt boyish vanity: "it is not pleasant to look as well as to feel that you've made a fool of yourself."

I look rather ruefully at my own pale gown of _bleu, Watteau ciel_, as the confectioner thereof fancifully called it, and see on it the poor boy's tear-stains.

"How am I to get back?" I say, doubtfully, but not wishing to put him to any pain that I can spare him. "I can hardly go alone."

"Come, then," he utters, brusquely, turning to go.

I feel sorry for him from the bottom of my heart. He has never been used to contradiction, and takes it very badly. I want to make friends with him. I long to restore to him his shattered self-conceit, but am afraid of adding fuel to the fire by anything I may say: so we hurry along in profound silence. As we emerge from the avenue I encounter an old friend.

"There is Colonel Fane!" I exclaim: "he will take me to Mrs. Warrington;" and as he comes towards me Lord Seldon abruptly raises his hat and leaves me.

"How wild that boy looks!" utters Fane, looking fixedly at me. "What have you been doing to him?"

"I?--nothing!" I answer, trying vainly to look unconscious. "Have you seen Mrs. Warrington? She will think I am lost."

"My dear Diana," says that lady, with slight reproach in her voice, as I join her, "where have you been all this immense time?"

A little later we are on our way to the gate. Mrs. Warrington stops to speak to some friends, and I stand listlessly aside until she shall have finished. There are two elegantly-dressed women standing with their backs to me, and, to my surprise, I hear my name mentioned.

"What can she have done to Lord Seldon?" says one.

"I saw him go off half an hour ago looking as wild as a March hare, and not long before that they went up the avenue together. She can't have refused him!"

"My dear," retorts the other, contemptuously, "did the beggar maid refuse King Cophetua?"

Happily, Mrs. Warrington is moving on. As we drive homewards I feel very little inclination to talk, nor, apparently, does my companion. But suddenly, when I am enveloped in a train of thought, she turns to me, and says,--

"Diana, what became of Lord Seldon?"

"I don't know," I stammer. "I think he went away----"

"Was he ill?"

"I do not think so. He did not say so."

There is a moment's pause. Then she says, looking intently at me,--

"It is not possible that he has proposed to you and that you have refused him! It is not possible!" she reiterates, as I turn my head away to conceal my embarrassment. Still I am silent. I will not tell the truth, but I cannot deny it.

"Diana!" whispers my usually placid friend, with vindictive energy, "I should like to shake you!"

For the rest of our drive the silence remains unbroken. But later on there is much conflict of words between us. She insists upon hearing the whole story, and, under the strictest promise of secrecy, I repeat it to her, with one exception: I do not tell her the reason I gave for refusing him; I content myself with saying that I feel it impossible to care sufficiently for him. She treats this reason with hottest scorn and contempt. Not like a bright handsome young fellow like that, the heir to a dukedom and any number of thousands a year! Preposterous! If he were ugly, ill-tempered, sickly, deformed, extraordinarily vicious, one could understand it; but a young fellow with every gift the world values, and devoted to me into the bargain, as every one could see,--it was sheer suicidal folly.

"Why did you not tell me," I say, reproachfully, "if you really saw that he cared for me?"

"Because," Mrs. Warrington returns, with exasperation, "such is the delightful perversity of girls, that if they think a man likes them, or that their friends want them to marry him, they immediately set their faces dead against it and say the y can't love him. Love!" (wrathfully): "I am sick of the very name of love! And what do girls know about it, pray, if they are modest and properly brought up? I am more convinced every day of my life that the French system is the proper one,--don't allow girls to have a voice in the matter. Love-matches indeed! A pretty end they generally come to! It is almost always the case that, if you meet with a married couple who dislike each other and quarrel more than usual, it was a _love_-match."

I do not believe for a moment that these are my dear Mrs. Warrington's real sentiments; only, for some cause or other, she seems to have set her heart upon my marrying Lord Seldon. Indeed, it is a far harder task to encounter all her arguments, her entreaties, her reasons, her insistance, than it was to repel his. Finally she leaves me in anger. What can I do? I would not for the world displease her willingly; and yet the other alternative is simply impossible. I shut myself up in my room: we were engaged to a ball that evening, but I had no heart to go, and my hostess excused me. Then, as I lay on my couch, chewing the cud of fancies that were, alas! all bitter, a letter was brought to me. I knew the scrawling hand, more scrawling than ever to-night: the inside was blurred and blotted, but you may depend I looked upon it in no unkind spirit of criticism.

"DEAREST" (he wrote),--"I know I behaved like a _brute_ this afternoon. I lost my temper, and it was very presumptuous of me to be so sure of you; but somehow I suppose I have been brought up to think I had only to ask and have, and I dare say it will do me good to have a little of the conceit knocked out of me. Only, darling, don't, for God's sake, make up your mind against me; don't settle anything in a hurry. Perhaps after a time you will see that it's no good thinking about that other fellow (oh, how I wish I could shoot him!--what a dunder-headed ass he must be!), or he may get married, and you know it's simply ridiculous to think that any one so _lovely_ as you could ever be _allowed_ to be an old maid. I can't think why you will persist in thinking me such a boy; lots of women much older than you don't, and, you know, apart from my being a long way past of age, I've seen a great deal of life, and knocking about as I've done puts years on to a fellow. But I can't believe seriously that my being young is really an objection in your eyes. You surely don't want a fellow old enough to be your father; though I have heard of girls taking odd fancies. I'll wait a year, darling, if you like,--two years, if it would make you care for me any more. I could live on _hope_. All I ask you is, just to let me hope. If you don't, I don't know what will become of me; the very thought, as I write this, drives me nearly _mad_. I've fancied myself in love before, but I swear to you I never cared for anybody a fiftieth part as I do for you, and if you've heard stories about me don't believe them, because there are always lots of people to tell lies about a fellow. Then you know how fond I am of Curly: I look upon him quite like a _brother_ already, and there isn't anything I won't do for him if you'll only give me the chance. Oh, Di, my darling, don't spurn _my heart's devotion_ and send me to the devil, for to the devil I shall go if you won't have me. Think it over: you may tell Mrs. Warrington, if you like; I know she'll stand my friend, and I have no pride now, for if you don't have me there is nothing more for me in this life, and I don't care who knows it. Montagu has been dining with me; he saw there was something up, and I felt so bad I could not help telling somebody; and he has cheered me up a bit. Good-night, my dearest love. I feel I could go on writing to you all night, only if I wrote forever I couldn't say more than that I love you with all my soul, and that I shall always be your most devoted _slave_ and _worshiper_.

"SELDON."

I read on until I come nearly to the end, full of kind thoughts and regret for the young fellow whose honest love shines through every line, but when I reach the passage about Captain Montagu a flood of anger rushes to my heart, the indignant tears to my eyes. Great heavens! was it not enough before!--and now he can coolly listen to Lord Seldon's confidences, and "cheer him up." Cheer him up!--that, I suppose, bitterly, was by holding out hopes. I fling the letter from me, and, springing up, race to and fro in my room, in such a storm of passionate anger as I never yet felt, never till this moment imagined I could feel. Presently my rage subsides into grief, and I fling myself on my knees and sob my very heart out. No matter that it is unreasonable, no matter that I have long ago renounced all hope of being anything to him, no matter that I revile him to myself and call him heartless, unfair, dishonorable: the sting of this new cruelty is none the less sharp. An impotent desire for revenge takes possession of me in this first burst of outraged love and pride. I think--yes, I think if it would give him pain I could marry Lord Seldon to-morrow. But it would not: that is the sting of it. He would doubtless come to the wedding, and make the most charming, graceful speech on the occasion, and I should have spoiled my life for nothing. Spoiled my life! I, Diana Carew, who have no prospect of anything but humility and poverty, spoil my life by marrying a man able to give me every pleasure and luxury the world holds! Ay, the world! But then I have never looked there for happiness. I am not ambitious. The first grief that ever came into my simple Paradise came with my first glimpse of the world, the first taste of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of (worldly) good and evil. The thought of an atmosphere of fashion, of fine company, fine houses, fine clothes, fine jewels, does not warm my heart: it only seems to make more barren and void a future which I should pass in the perpetual society of a man I could not love. I found him pleasant enough as a friend, but when I force myself to regard him in the light of the one being to whom I am to look in the future for love, sympathy, comfort, my whole soul revolts. To marry a man, too, against the wish of his family!--to be looked down upon by them!--in time, perhaps (what more likely ending to a boyish fancy!) to be treated with coldness and neglect by him! No: the prospect of being Lady Seldon might seem fair enough to a girl who had been educated in the world's creeds, who had been faithfully taught the worship of mammon, but not to a simple country-girl, who values not pomp or grandeur one rush when they are divorced from love and truth and faith. To marry a man simply because he has a title or money seems in my eyes the basest degradation. How is it different from standing up in an Eastern market and being knocked down to the highest bidder? But then I am not a well-trained, well-tutored young lady: I am only a little girl who has grown up wild in the country and been allowed the run of a library of old-fashioned romances.