Chapter XXXVII: Not Told by Diana

Diana is sitting over the fire one dull November afternoon three days after her return from Alford. She has brought home a goodly store of books, and is deep in one of them. She has glanced through the window and assured herself that there is nothing to attract her out of doors; her conscience does not prick her on account of the dogs, as they have had a famous run before lunch: so she arms herself with a novel with the real delight of a passionate lover of reading, piles up the blazing fire with more wood, and ensconces herself in a cosy chair with her feet on the fender. The bright flames throw a ruddy light upon her hair and a delicate pink shade on her face; her slender ringless hands look scarce strong enough to support the heavy tome over which she is poring so intently; her small slippered feet are crossed on the fender, and she has evidently made up her mind to an afternoon of uninterrupted enjoyment. But she has only read a chapter and a half when the unwonted sound of the door-bell makes her start.

"Oh, dear!" she says, half aloud, with an accent of unfeigned disappointment, "who can it possibly be? Just as I was getting so intensely interested, too!"

She is not left long in suspense. Gay herself ushers in, with the ceremony due to so important a guest, "Sir Hector Montagu."

"You are not well," says Diana, in a tone of friendly interest, as soon as the first greetings are over. "How pale you look!" He takes a seat opposite to her, and for a moment makes no answer. She has time to note the haggard, hunted expression of his face, changed almost out of knowledge in the last three days.

"It is no use," he says, in a low, agitated voice: "I cannot be silent any longer. I gave you my word not to open my lips about my love at Alford, and I kept it, did I not?--kept it to the letter. But it is too strong for me. Can you not give me hope? Oh, for God's sake, if you can, do!"

And the hunted eyes look at her in terrible earnest. At his words, all the kindly warm feeling of friendship for him that has grown up in her heart during the last three weeks dies out and gives way to a cold feeling of repulsion. Her face becomes pale, and she shivers,--ever so little,--but yet he sees it.

"What is it," he cries, in a voice of indignant pain, "that repels you so? Am I loathsome? Am I something to shrink from as you might from a leper? Am I so repulsive that even you, who are so good and charitable you would not willingly pain any one, cannot but shiver at the sound of my voice when it speaks of love?"

Diana's kind heart is stung by remorse.

"Oh, no! no! do not say that!" she cries, hastily, and then looking round as though to conjure help from some invisible presence. "Oh!" she says, remorsefully, clasping her hands, "what can I do to make him not care for me?"

He makes a great effort over himself, but his eyes are full of unutterable pain. Presently he says, humbly,--

"Could you not try to tolerate me?--could you not get accustomed to the thought of me by degrees? And then surely, in time, my love for you could not fail to bring out some answering feeling in your heart."

Her eyes are fixed mournfully on the fire; she does not know how to answer him, since it is impossible that she can give him hope. He takes faint courage from her silence, and continues:

"After that night at Alford I did everything in my power to forget you. I vowed that I would conquer my love, but" (sighing) "it was too strong for me. Ever since my father's death I have occupied myself perpetually about the place, trying to get oblivion by hard work both bodily and mental. But all the time I hungered for the sight of you; and when you came you made the place heaven for me, as I knew you would. God knows what a bitter effort it cost me to keep silent all the time; but I had given you my word. Now I must speak."

Diana, genuinely distressed, casts about her for something that will make her refusal of him less harsh.

"I wish you would not persist in thinking so well of me," she says, rather forlornly. "I can't think why you should care so much about me: indeed, I am not so very nice, really; you would be very much disappointed in me."

"Should I?" he answers, eagerly. "I am quite content to risk that."

"But," she says, raising troubled brown eyes to his, and trying back since her last words were unsuccessful, "surely it could be no happiness to you, to any man, to have a woman who could not make the smallest, faintest pretense of loving him. And" (sorrowfully, because she hates to give him pain) "I could not."

"It seems strange," he says, turning his eyes from hers and gazing into the fire. "I used to be rather a proud fellow, but now I seem to myself a very abject. I would rather have your indifference than any other woman's love. I would rather" (looking at her with fierce, miserable eyes) "have you if I knew you hated me than go without you."

Diana's resources have come to an end. What can one say to a madman? She takes refuge in silence. Oh, if her father would only come in! she thinks; if some diversion of any kind would occur to put an end to this miserable _tête-à-tête_! But nothing does happen, and she sits staring mutely at the fire and trying to get inspiration out of the glowing logs. But none comes, and, after a long, unbroken silence, she says, desperately,--

"What am I to say to you?"

"Say!" he cries, clutching at the very faintest ray of hope; "say you will try. Think about it; try to get used to the thought; let me come and see you often; tell me how to make you like me. What is there in the world I would not do or compel myself to, if it made you think more kindly of me? If you send me away" (feverishly) "you send me to the devil! I shall throw up everything at home and go away somewhere, to Africa or China,--it is all the same to me, as long as I only put an impossible distance between myself and the sight of you."

"What!" cries Diana, "and give up all the plans for doing good that you have looked forward to for years, now when everything is in your power, in your own hands?"

"Yes," he says, bitterly, "even so. I am a poor philanthropist, am I not, to let all my good resolves be balked by a pet at Fate; but if I stayed here without you I should go mad: there is madness somewhere in the family, I believe" (looking rather wild).

Then, as he sees Diana's frightened look, he says, calmly,--

"No, no; do not be afraid. I am sane enough; only about going to the farther ends of the earth I am quite serious. Oh, Diana," coming closer to her and taking one white, reluctant hand, "think what we might do together, how happy we would make our people, how, working together, we should strive to lessen some of the gigantic burden of sorrow and want that grinds the souls and bodies of the poor. Has that no weight with you,--you who are so pitiful, so tender-hearted and charitable? Your life could not but be a happy one, since it would be so full of goodness and charity, and you would be loved" (his deep voice quivering with strong passion) "as I believe before God no woman was ever loved before. What is my fate to be? is it to be a life of love, a life of usefulness and honor, or will you condemn me to be a miserable outcast?"

He is pouring out his very soul in his words: it is no exaggerated language, such as men think right to use on such occasions; every syllable comes straight from his suffering heart.

Diana is overcome: the intensity of his passion masters her. Her face is ashen pale: her lips will scarce unclose to pronounce her heart's death-warrant. In a moment of time she has thought of her barren future, of the hopelessness of her own love, and as he draws the vivid picture of his own life to come, which, according to her fiat, shall be good or evil, the thought of sacrificing herself dawns in her heart.

"Let it be as you wish!" she almost gasps.

He seizes both her hands and looks into her eyes as though he would pierce her very soul.

"Are you in earnest?" he says. "Oh, for God's sake don't deceive me!--don't promise and take your word back again, unless you want me to blow my brains out!"

She draws away from him and stands upright.

"If you are willing to let me sacrifice myself," she says, looking at him with cold misery in her eyes,--"well" (with a gasping sigh), "so be it!"

"It shall not be a sacrifice," he cries, passionately: "you will, you shall be happy. Unless you are the most unreasonable woman God ever made,--and I know you are not that,--you must be content with your life: nay, you shall love me yet."

For one moment, in his wild joy of having her, willing or unwilling, he loses his stern self-control and lays his burning lips on her cold, most reluctant ones. And if the King of Terrors had claimed her as his bride, and sealed her to himself with his icy kiss, she could not have shrunk and shivered with a more ghastly horror. But Hector, if even he is conscious of it, does not care: his blinded eyes see only the radiant picture of the future wherein she shall love him as he loves her.

She starts from him, crying, with unconscious cruelty,--

"Do not make me hate you! You know I have no love to give you. I am sacrificing my future to yours. Do not make the sacrifice too impossible!"

"Forgive me," he says, humbly, taking her cold hand quietly.

Before she knows what he is doing, he has slipped on her finger a ring blazing with diamonds.

"Do you know," he whispers, triumphantly, "I have carried that about with me ever since the day I went to London when you were first at Alford, in the forlorn wild hope that some day this might come to pass?"

Diana feels inclined to tear it off and fling it away. What cares she though he could deck her from head to foot with diamonds, each one as big as the Koh-i-noor? Would they make her heart less heavy, her sacrifice less bitter?

"I know," he utters, an uneasy flush coming to his dark brow, "that you cannot get reconciled to the idea all at once. Perhaps you hate me for having taken an unfair advantage of you, but you will think better of it in time. Only don't, I implore you, steel your heart against me: try, when I am gone, to think more kindly of me. I won't stop now" (looking wistfully at her, as though hoping she might bid him stay).

She does not: she is longing to be rid of his hateful presence, to be alone with her gigantic new misery,--the worst, she thinks now, that has ever befallen her. So, with one lingering clasp of her unwilling hand, he goes,--goes, astounding as the fact may seem, wildly, feverishly happy.

Diana, left to herself, feels like one in a dream. She moves to the window and looks out at the chill dull day, chill and dull as her own hopes of the future,--looks with vague eyes at the bare trees with their scanty remnant of yellow leaves, at the sodden gravel-walk, the few straggling bits of color among the dying autumn flowers. She shivers, and comes back to the warm fire and leans with one arm on the mantel-shelf and her head resting on her hand. Glancing unconsciously downwards, her eyes light upon the ring which is flashing back a hundred lovely lights from the glowing flames. She drags it off and flings it away from her, and then, as a sudden remembrance darts across her, she tears out her handkerchief and passes it sharply again and again over her lips until the blood comes. The lips that she had meant should never more be touched by mortal man! that until now had been sacred to the memory of that one golden day! She begins to realize what she has done. A vista of unspeakable horror opens before her. What! to live in the house that is yet his home, where he needs must come and she needs must see him, and, seeing, love him, though she is his brother's wife? And at this ghastly thought she flings herself down on the ground and sobs and moans with such terrible anguish that, could the man who was so confident of winning her love see her, he must needs relinquish all hope.

Sir Hector mounted his horse,--

"He gave his bridle-rein a shake,"

and rode off triumphantly, with flashing eyes. In his exultation he tossed a sovereign to the old man who did duty as groom and gardener at Carew Court. The latter, gazing at his retreating form, had half a mind to run after him and ask if he had not mistaken the gold piece for a shilling, but pleased himself by deciding that it was intended as a gift, now Sir Hector had come into so much wealth and splendor. "Anyhow," he remarked to himself, "it's nothin' to him, and it's a fortin' to me." Saying which, after one more loving glance, he put it away in his waistcoat-pocket, where it warmed the cockles of his old heart.

Meantime, Sir Hector rode on his way. For the first mile he felt nothing but a wild sense of triumph; at the second, an unpleasant remembrance of Diana's stony look of misery thrust itself upon him; at the third, a reaction came, and he pulled up his horse suddenly by the roadside. Bruno, having had a tolerably long journey, was not fretful or impatient at this sudden pause, but betook himself, unchecked, to searching in the hedge for some stray bit of edible green, wherewith to beguile himself whilst awaiting his master's pleasure. If any one had come along the road just then they might have been astonished on this chilly November afternoon to see a horse and his rider stationed by the hedge-side, as though it were a broiling afternoon and they were taking shelter from the too ardent rays of a July sun. Sir Hector's brows were deeply knit. Here, in the hushed gray stillness, between the two hedgerows of wintry red berries and tangled brambles, he was fighting with himself the hardest battle he had ever yet been called upon to fight during his six lustres of life,--fighting with the hopes that were dearer to him than life. One horrible thought had taken possession of him,--the same one that had moved Diana to her outburst of anguish: it was the thought of his brother. He knew well enough that she had loved him, that it was that love which had stood between himself and her before, that for aught he knew was standing between them now. Had he not been in the same house with her for weeks only two months ago, and though over his father's death-bed he had wrung from him, on certain conditions, the oath that he would never speak to Diana again of love, what faith was there to be put in him? Had he not at Alford, the very same evening that he had volunteered to withdraw himself from his (Hector's) light, made open and violent love to her? But came the ghastly thought, suppose it turned out as he hoped, suppose Diana came to care for him: could he hope to keep her forever out of sight of Charlie? And suppose when she did meet him, after however long a time, the old love came back? Even if he trusted implicitly in her high principle, would that hinder his own jealous heart from beating with furious suspicion, even hatred of his brother,--of them both, perhaps? And yet to tear this new hope, that had seemed like the unclosing of heaven's gates to him, out of his heart, to leave a torn, gaping wound, that all time would fail to cicatrize!

It is over; with one throe of agony he has torn the dear hope out of his life. He picks up the reins, turns his horse's head, and rides swiftly back to Carew Court. The old groom, seeing him come back, is smitten with a grievous suspicion that he has discovered his error and returned for the sovereign, and is preparing to think meanly of him in his disappointed heart. But Sir Hector only throws him the reins, muttering that he has forgotten something, and turns hastily to the house. The hall-door is ajar: he pushes it open and goes in. No one meets him, and he makes his way to the room where he left Diana. Without knocking, he opens the door, and sees her prone by the fireside, wailing and weeping in her bitter abandonment. She does not hear him, and he stands for a moment looking at her.

"It is well that I came," he thinks, with a bitter pang.

He closes the door, and she, hearing the sound, turns quickly.

"Dry your tears," he says, in a harsh, husky voice; "do not sob in that agonized way;" for, try as she may, she cannot all at once still the gasping throes that shake her slender frame. "I have come to release you."

"Yes, yes," she cries, eagerly; "you are right; you see it could not have been. Oh" (rising to her feet and giving a sigh of utter relief), "I am glad that you see it too. There," she says, stretching out a hand to him that is no longer unwilling, and smiling through her tears, "I will make a fresh compact with you. I will always be your friend,--your best friend."

"Never!" he answers, harshly, more pained than words could express at her joyful acceptance of his bitter sacrifice. Surely she who was his ideal of all that was tender and womanly might have some intuitive sympathy for the great waste and havoc of his life, which she herself, however unwittingly, has caused! "After to-day, if I can help it, I will never see you again."

"You will think better of it," she says, and all the time she is stealing furtive glances around to see what has become of the ring she flung away in her disgust. Presently she espies it glittering behind the leg of a chair. He has turned away, and is looking with miserable eyes into the fire, and she takes the opportunity of stooping to pick it up and slip it on her finger again. As if he had not seen it lying the very first moment he entered the room!

Diana stands looking at him, rather embarrassed how to return it. She does not want to give him pain, but she cannot keep this valuable token that but so late was the badge and symbol of the loathed enslavement of her future. As she is casting about uneasily in her mind for some appropriate yet unwounding words with which to return it, he turns and looks at her.

"Let me look at you for the last time!" he mutters, in a voice harsh with strangled emotion; "let me be quite sure that the woman who spoiled my life was as lovely as I thought her!"

Diana stands before him with the color shifting uneasily in her face: not even the hitter fit of crying has made her unbeautiful. The troubled brown eyes look up at him with unfeigned sorrow for his pain. He gives one long fixed look at her. "Good-by," he says, with a sigh, wrung from the depths of his heart, not attempting to touch her, or to take other farewell than that one sorrowful word. With that he turns to go.

"Stop!" she says, detaining him: "this ring" (drawing it quickly from her finger),--"please take it."

He grasps it with mingled wrath and pain, and flings it furiously into the fire's red heart. But his fury has more of pain than anger in it.

He is gone, and Diana on her knees is carefully rescuing the costly bauble from its fiery grave. When it is cool enough, she wipes it, and lays it aside to be returned on some future occasion. She feels very sorry for him, but in truth and reality she does not even dimly guess at the bitter pain she has inflicted upon him. We know well enough our own pangs, but which of us ever realizes those of his brother man?