Chapter XXXVIII: Not Told by Diana

As Hector rode home, he felt that all pleasure in life, all love of it, was gone from him. Until now he had always had hope, however dim or vague, that Diana would be his one day; now he realized fully the futility of his dreams. In one hour's time, life had grown black and bitter: it held nothing for him in the future that he valued. Many a boy in his passionate disappointment has felt the same, and in a month's time has laughed again and gone about the world with a very cheery comfortable interest in it; but this would not be the case with Hector. He was not reckless or impulsive; he knew his own mind; having lost the one woman whom he loved, no other could ever take her place. There might be a thousand more made after the same external pattern, women with bright eyes, sweet red lips, and gracious ways, but there was only one Diana Carew for him. He had never loved or much desired any other woman; this one possessed all his heart. And she had tossed it lightly, nay, contemptuously, away.

For a few hours he kept up bravely. He dined with his mother, talked to her cheerfully, as though to-day had been as commonplace as other days, read or seemed to read the papers as usual while she dozed, and kissed her with the wonted affectionate kiss when she retired for the night. He too went to his room, and there he laid his arms on the table, and, burying his face in them, sobbed--not like a child, as the common phrase runs, but--as only a stern grown man can sob, and he, if God is merciful to him, but once in a lifetime. It was his farewell to love, to hope, to life, all but the mere mechanical every-day part of it. What should he do? he asked himself; if he stayed on here alone, with all the huge long hours in which to eat his heart out in vain regrets, he should go mad. Then he formed a bitter resolve. How many a time had he not heard of men going to the devil when overtaken by grievous disappointment, and coming back after a time the worse perhaps in health and pocket, but tolerably cured of their heart-aches, anyhow with the wounds cauterized. He had never been a saint; he had as much of earthly alloy as most men, not bad men, have; but he had never loved vice for its own sake, had always had a healthy disgust for its grossness and coarseness; but now he meant to fly to its foul waters for the nepenthe without which he needs must die or lose his reason. He was going to try dissipation, like a man of sober, temperate habits might toss off glass after glass of brandy as an antidote to the agonies of neuralgia. So he went, and returned a fortnight later in the state a man of his temperament would naturally do, his nerves unstrung, his whole soul filled with unutterable loathing and horror of himself and all connected with his moral experiment. He had a new remedy in view now. He longed for death as men long "after hid treasures," but he would not take his life with his own hand; that would be unmanly, that would stain his ancient name with dishonor. But there were other means. He took to hunting every day when there was a meet within twenty miles. He had always been a fair rider, now he became a desperate one,--rode as straight as a die; no place was too big or too ugly for him. The best riders in the field looked askance at him. "By Jove!" said one to another, "one would think a fellow who has just come in to a title and such a property as Montagu would set a little more value on his life. Hang me, if one wouldn't think the fellow wanted to break his neck!"

And of course, as it always happens when a man burns to shake off life, it clings all the stronger in him. Sir Hector came scathless out of his rides for death, without a bruise or a scratch: he seemed to bear a charmed life. And he would come home worn out and sleep for hours from sheer exhaustion, and then, as regularly as the hour of two came round, he would wake up, and be delivered over to his tormentor,--memory. He tried to read, but Diana's eyes looked out at him from the pages; try as he might, he could not escape her. And in the morning he would come down white, wild, haggard-looking, and, if it was a hunting-day, would mount his horse, or, if not, would go over his farms, or take a gun and walk twenty miles after birds; but his hand and eye were unsteady, and he did not often hit anything now. When he did, he felt an unsportsmanlike feeling of regret, and would take the dead bird in his hand, smooth the ruffled feathers gently, and say, "I might have left the life in you, since you enjoyed it. I wish to God you were alive again, and I was dead!"

His mind had quite lost the strong, firm balance which it had possessed formerly in a greater degree than most men's.

Lady Montagu was away for a few weeks at Hastings, to get over the worst of the winter, but she was coming home for Christmas, which would soon be here now. Simkins remarked with genuine distress the change in his master, and confided his doubts and fears to Mrs. Bishop, the comely housekeeper, with whom, at no very far distant date, he contemplated setting up the "Montagu Arms." With the penetration of her sex, she made a very good guess at the cause of the change in Sir Hector, and was not long in bringing Simkins round to her own view of the case.

"Oh, woman! woman!" he said, apostrophizing the sex in general, and Mrs. Bishop in particular, "what you has to answer for! Not but what I must say, if there is to be a new Lady Montagu, there's no one I would like to see occupying the place better than Miss Carew."

"Tut!" answered Mrs. Bishop, huffily; "we don't want no more mistresses here than my lady."

Sir Hector had always made a point of going to church on Sunday mornings; not that he took any particular pleasure in it, but because he considered it right for the sake of example. He found it wearisome work sometimes listening to the vicar's platitudes. In his heart he was skeptically inclined, like many intellectual men, and insisted on bringing revelation to the test of reason. At home, however, and in his own parish, he eschewed all argument on theological subjects, and, for aught any one at Alford knew to the contrary, his religious convictions were as deep and sincere as those of the vicar himself. In church he behaved with the decorum and propriety of a gentleman: who was to know that one half the time he was indignantly refuting to himself the axioms delivered from reading-desk and pulpit, and the other half thinking of utterly irrelevant subjects? He had great ideas of consistency, too: it seemed a monstrous absurdity, not to say crime, to pray to God on a Sunday to deliver you from sins that you had the fullest intention of committing probably the very next week. He steadfastly refused to "eat and drink his own damnation" by communicating whilst his life was still impure. This was the only religious exercise of which he seemed outwardly unobservant. But in the future's happy vistas he had dreamed of a time when all this would be changed, when his life would be pure without effort, when he would banish all doubts from his heart, and, kneeling beside the woman he loved, would, with a glad heart, also offer up ungrudgingly his prayer and praise.

There are very few men who do not look for and respect piety in a woman: even a bad man is shocked by irreligion or flippant sneers at virtue from a woman's lips. Hector had watched Diana in church with stealthy and secret gladness,--had gazed at her sweet serious face, listened to her devout utterances, longed for her dear sake to be better, and looked forward to the time when she, by her example and influence, should lead him too heavenwards. And now all these hopes were shattered in the dust, and there was nothing left for him but to "curse God and die." How could he pray to a God who had decreed the utter ruin and blasting of his life? how love him as a Father who would not willingly afflict, when he had laid this crushing misery upon him? And between him and heaven now there was a great gulf fixed,--the gulf of deliberate sin. But, though he had ceased even formally to utter a prayer, he nevertheless went to church,--partly from habit, partly from a sense of responsibility, and chiefly to get rid of two hours of the weary Sabbath. The Sunday before Christmas-day he went as usual. A stranger was doing duty, and Hector prepared himself to listen with a shade more interest than usual to the sermon. It was no marvel of oratory or elocution,--a few plain words, plainly spoken; but they gave Hector the idea of a new weapon wherewith to repel the enemy that beset him in the night and in the noonday. The preacher was quite a young man, nothing much to look at, but he had that most excellent gift in a preacher, the art, whether it was art or not, of making his hearers feel that he was thoroughly in earnest. Moreover, he knew when to stop: he did not fatigue his already half-weary congregation with a lengthy discourse. His sermon occupied just thirteen minutes by the clock in the organ-gallery, and when he had made his point he concluded. Some such words as these they were:

"Which among us has led a life so charmed that there has not entered into it a bitter grief and disappointment? And here to-day, I doubt not, there are hearts which are troubled, sorrowful, perhaps despairing. And to those hearts I speak now. I say to them, have you ever tried prayer? I do not mean the morning and even prayers that you gabble through by rote, prayers many of them set and formal ones for things which perhaps you do not want,--but prayer, the very outpouring of your souls, the prayer you would pray on your knees with all the intensity your voice and heart could command if you were asking the life of one you loved better than yourself, of an earthly sovereign or judge. If you have, I will answer for it that you never pleaded to my Master in vain. I do not say that he saw fit to give you the thing for which you asked: in your blindness you may have asked something which, had it been granted, would have been your curse instead of your blessing; but you have gained peace, strength, courage; you have been able to say, afterwards, 'It is better if the will of God be so.' If you have never tried it,--if you have said to yourself, 'What does God care? he will not trouble himself to look down upon my wants and sufferings,' or if you have thought, 'God must hate me, because I have led a wicked life: I dare not approach him,' here, now, in his name I bid you shake off all doubt and fear. Prayer is the talisman against misery. Go to him; go in secret, where no disturbing thoughts from the outside world can beset you, and there pour out all your soul to him as you have never yet done to God or man; strive as Jacob strove when he cried out in his anguish, 'I will not let thee go except thou bless me,' and I, the humblest of his ministers, will answer for my great Lord and Master that he who goes unto him humbly, sincerely, urgently, shall in no wise be cast out."

There was no grandeur or even originality in the words; the speaker was commonplace enough, but his eyes kindled as he uttered them, his voice trembled with strong feeling, and, as he spoke, there was such intense conviction in his utterance that no one could think he was preaching a remedy whose efficacy he had not himself proved.

Hector, whose heart was hardened like the nether millstone, said to himself, as he walked home, "I too will try if there is balm in his Gilead." And he who had not knelt in sincere prayer to God since he was a youth, shut himself in his room and prayed with wild intensity. But he rose from his knees cold, unconscious of any response to his agony of entreaty. He had but beaten the air with vain and empty words.

But had he prayed aright? He had not besought resignation, or submission, or the power to get good out of what seemed evil: he prayed that the woman he longed for might be his, or that he might forget her. He felt as though God were angry with him and would not hear him. Who were those, he wondered bitterly, who had tried the paths of sin and found them fair and flowery? Apples of the Dead Sea, that filled the mouth with gall-bitter ashes, they had been to him. Then, since vice was hateful and virtue impossible, what should he do but die? The next two days he rode harder than ever: his favorite hunter was killed, but he got off, as usual, without a scratch.

On the third day Lady Montagu returned. She was positively frightened at the change in her son as he helped her out of the carriage. "My dear boy," she cried, anxiously, "what is the matter with you? Why did you not send for me before?"

"Matter!" he answered, laughing a laugh that sounded painfully hollow and unmirthful. "What should be the matter? I am as well as ever I was in my life. Why, mother, you look as scared as if you had seen a ghost."

She put her hand on his arm and went with him to her boudoir.

"Hector," she said, when they were alone, with a searching glance into his eyes, "something must ail you, or you could not be so changed in a month."

"I expect," he answered, with a bitter laugh, "that you have come straight from the sight of your handsome son, and had forgotten how ugly I was."

Lady Montagu looked at him in unfeigned painful amazement. He was never wont to speak bitterly to her.

"The truth is," he said, changing his tone, "I have been hunting a good deal lately. You see, there is not a great deal of excitement in this lively place, and I expect it has taken it out of me a little." Then he added, abruptly, "Perhaps I may as well make all my confession at once, to save you the trouble of worming it out of me by degrees. I asked Miss Carew again, and she refused me."

Lady Montagu looked at him with all her mother's love yearning out of her wet gray eyes. If perhaps she had loved her bright handsome son the best in fair days, in the dark ones her heart went out to the one in trouble, as the mother's heart always does.

"My poor boy!" she said, softly, clasping his hands tenderly in hers. And, but for the shame of it, the stern man would fain have laid his grieved head upon that tender breast, and poured his bitter pain into the loving, listening ear, as he had done long years ago in his childhood.

But now he drew himself away, and said, huskily, "God bless you, mother! I know you are sorry for me; but, if you love me, never speak of it again! Men get over these things," he added, with a smile so wan it almost broke her heart to see.

She said not another word, but as she watched him all that evening her anxiety deepened: she felt there must be something physically as well as mentally amiss, to make his face so drawn and sharp, his eyes so hollow and sunken, his usually firm strong hands so shaking and nervous. The next day she sent a note to the doctor, who, as is not unseldom the case, was also the tried and trusted friend of the family.

"Come and dine with us in a friendly way to-night," she wrote. "There is something very wrong with Hector."

Mr. Benyon was shrewd, kindly, practical: under his auspices Hector and his brother had gone through the infantine troubles that were then considered _de rigueur_, had won their interested affections by prescribing nice instead of nasty remedies when they were ill, and by romping with them when they got well again; and the liking had not slackened when they grew to men. He often dined at the Court, and was always a welcome guest. On this occasion, though his dining was no unusual event, Hector understood perfectly that he had been sent for on his account. But he made no sign, and received the doctor with his usual cordial courtesy. When Lady Montagu left them after dinner, Mr. Benyon continued to sip his wine with his wonted enjoyment, talked about sport, local matters, and so forth. All the same he was watching his companion narrowly. He observed his restlessness, saw how little he ate, how hurriedly and without any pleasure he gulped down his wine, as a man might swallow a soothing draught. He saw how sunken his eyes were, how livid the lines underneath them, how his cheeks were sunken and his lips so parched and dry he had frequently to moisten them. The doctor did not like the look of him. He said to himself, shrewdly, "There's a woman at the bottom of this, I suspect, or he's taken to gambling: most probably the former." It was no good to lead up gently to the subject, he concluded. Hector was not easy to tackle. So, suddenly, without any preface, he said, looking hard at him, with his glass midway back from his mouth to the table,--

"There's something wrong with you, my friend: you want a little of my advice."

"What a penetrating fellow you are, Benyon!" returned Hector, with a mirthless laugh. "Of course my mother didn't put you up to this?"

"It don't want much putting up to," answered the other, bluntly. "Do you happen to have looked in the glass lately? I suppose I might ask the usual question, 'Who is she?' though it's nothing to my purpose to know; but, rather, what the deuce has she been doing to you?"

"Who can minister to a mind diseased?" said Hector, wearily.

"I can, to a certain extent. Keep your digestion right, eat more, drink less, and get as much exercise and fresh air as you can."

"I've hunted five and six days for the last three weeks, and have been in the saddle, on an average, eight hours out of every twenty-four."

"The deuce you have! If you go on like that, you'll knock yourself up completely. You're not used to so much of it; and in your present state it is likely to do you a great deal more harm than good. Try something else; get some one to lend you a yacht, and go off to the Mediterranean."

Hector laughed a harsh grating laugh.

"Rare good thing, the deck of a yacht, when you want to get out of yourself! Try again, Benyon."

The doctor rose, and came round to where Hector was sitting.

"My pulse, eh?" (anticipating him). "There you are; and my tongue is quite at your service."

Mr. Benyon sat down in front of him, looking grave, and said, quietly,--

"This won't do: you can't stand this sort of game much longer."

"No," replied Hector, coolly: "I shall be in the lake with the carp, or in a lunatic-asylum."

"I should not wonder," said Benyon, calmly. "Your nerves are unstrung, your brain is over-excited, and both are acting most injuriously on your stomach."

"My dear fellow, I am as wise as that myself. There is only one chance for me: give me of the waters of Lethe. I haven't tried that yet. Your chloral and morphia will poison me quicker than brandy: so much the better."

"There is something you want more than drugs or opiates."

"And that is?"

"A little common sense. Why, what the deuce!" cried the doctor, warmly, "a cool-headed, sensible fellow like you to let anything bring you to this state! I couldn't have believed it of you."

"Could you not? Suppose, now" (with suppressed fire), "that you loved a woman to madness and felt you could not live without her: how would you cure yourself of your passion?"

"How?" answered Benyon, promptly. "Why, marry her if she were single, or run away with her if she were married."

"Ay, but suppose she was free, and yet no earthly means, neither love, mercy, nor pity, would make her consent to be yours?"

"Then I would forget her," rejoined the doctor, stoutly.

"If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she he?"

"But if you can't!" cried Hector, passionately. "You say I am a cool-headed, sensible fellow: do you suppose I haven't tried? Tried! good God! what have I not tried? perpetual motion, excess,--in short" (laughing harshly), "all the good old approved remedies for the disease."

"And that is precisely the way you've brought yourself to your present condition. Now, I don't want to frighten you, but it's my duty to tell you the plain truth: if you go on like this you'll bring on paralysis or softening of the brain. You must make an effort to shake it off. Occupy your mind with something, no matter what; take a fair amount of exercise, without overdoing it; and, above all, beware of stimulants. I only wish," said Benyon, smiling and laying a kind hand on his shoulder, "I could cure you right off by giving you the young lady; only perhaps the remedy might be worse than the disease."

"The girl I love is an angel," said Hector, fiercely, "and I would give every acre of Alford to possess her."

"I talked in that way once," remarked the doctor, ruefully. Report said his lady had been a beauty and a temper. It said, furthermore, that when the former attribute departed it left the latter in greater force than ever.