Chapter XLI: Diana's Story

It is a bright day in February: if it were not for the skeleton-like appearance of the trees, whose bare branches force themselves unpleasantly upon the eye, one might fancy it May. The wooing of the joyous birds before their St. Valentine is sweetly noisy: they are intensely glad of Winter's death, and are holding a spirited wake over him. Do not be too sure that he is gone, you merry little souls: there's many a nipping night, and day too, in store for you before your friend the Summer shines the frost away. It has been a happy winter,--happy as life ever can be again, I think to myself.

Curly has quite recovered, and we have all, papa included, spent a delightful week at Warrington, where, at our especial request, there was no party,--only just the Fanes. And then they (the Fanes) came to us for a week, for now we have come into our money we are able to entertain a little,--in a very small way, of course. We have what I believe people who are poor generally have, and what the rich as often lack, the sincere, hearty desire to make our friends happy and comfortable. We poor people know that it all depends upon us whether our guests enjoy their visit, and the rich are too apt to trust to their adventitious circumstances and to make no further effort. We have an extra in-door servant, on the strength of our new wealth, and a real groom, who does not help in the garden, nor do anything apart from his own domain, except wait at dinner when we have visitors. For we have two saddle-horses now, and Curly and papa, or Curly and I, ride every day. Papa is a different being: he is quite bright and cheerful, and when he is out with us Curly and I are tremendously proud of him; we never see any one else so distinguished-looking or who talks so well.

Money is a very pleasant thing. I know we find ours so. It is a real delight to go into a poor cottage now, knowing that where help is wanted one can give it, instead of coming out heart-sick and heart-sore because one has so little to bestow but one's exceeding sympathy. I wonder the rich do not oftener treat themselves to the pleasure of giving. I don't mean by sending checks to charities, but by going among the poor, giving the gifts with their own hands, and seeing for themselves the immense happiness it causes. How it would expand their hearts, and prevent them getting choked up with selfishness! There is no pleasure in this world like giving, of that I am quite sure; and it is a pleasure with which many people are very chary of indulging themselves.

I have forbidden myself to think about my love since September, when its utter hopelessness was so bitterly proved to me. I cannot help remembering how dearly I have loved Colonel Montagu, and right well I know that I shall never again love mortal man with the same love wherewith I have loved him. Sometimes, too, a troubled thought about Hector has crept over me. I have fancied that I might have been kinder, showed more feeling for him; and yet I could never realize that he was capable of suffering much for love's sake. Once Mr. Warrington said at dinner,--

"I never saw a fellow so changed as Montagu. He looks so pale and fine-drawn, and rides as if he had the devil behind him."

Looking up at the moment, I catch papa's eye fixed earnestly upon me, and the color mounts to my cheek, and a guilty feeling creeps over me.

This February morning I am standing at the open window, and the pug, with many seductive devices, is entreating me to go out. Anon she pulls me by the dress, or, jumping up, catches a finger playfully in her mouth, then whines and scratches, lays her head on one side, and says with her eyes, as plainly as any human being could say it with his tongue, "Dear little mistress, do, _do_ come out." So, presently, being rather a slave to her, I pronounce the magic words, "Come along, dogs!" with which she knows I never deceive her, and with one bound she is out of the house and down the gravel walk. Papa is coming up it, and she wriggles her body fascinatingly at him by way of salutation. Contrary to his usual habit, he does not stop to talk to her in friendly dog-language, but comes straight towards me. In a moment I divine by his face that there is something wrong.

"What is it?" I cry, before he has time to unclose his lips.

"I have just heard some very bad news," he answers.

"Curly!" I gasp, turning white to the lips. Why do one's terrors always run upon those one loves best?

"No, no, thank God; nothing that concerns him. Poor Sir Hector Montagu has been drowned in the Bay of Naples. I did not even know he was abroad."

A chill creeps over me,--a great sorrowful pity that as yet finds no words.

"Poor fellow! he died saving the life of one of the yacht's crew, I hear," continues papa.

Mechanically I turn and go towards the house, he following me. I feel horribly shocked by this news, shocked and remorseful as though in some measure I were guilty of his death. In a moment everything comes back to me,--his tenderness towards his mother, his kindness to me, his goodness to the poor: what will become of _them_? And then involuntarily my thoughts turn to his successor.

"Poor fellow!" utters papa, softly.

Poor fellow! echoes my heart, and the tears rain down my face.

"What will the poor people do?" I say, speaking my thoughts aloud.

"I hear they take it terribly to heart," answers papa. "He was such a good fellow, and they looked to his doing so much for them. His brother, I fear, is a very different sort of man."

My father's unconscious words stab me to the quick, all the more perhaps because of the truth underlying them.

My first impulse is to write to Lady Montagu; but when I take pen in hand a strange diffidence comes over me. She must know about his coming over here, for she has never written to me since. If I was the cause, the unintentional cause, God knows, of his going abroad, will she lay his death at my door? The very thought makes me shrink with pain and self-reproach. Yet what could I do? Must a woman not dare to refuse a man she cannot love, lest some evil chance should befall him for which she must evermore afterwards reproach herself? I sit down to my painful task, and, as best I may, pour out my genuine grief and sympathy, with all my respect and admiration for her dead son's goodness. Many a tear blots the paper as I write: so grieved am I that, could it bring him back again, I think I would give him hand and heart too ungrudgingly.

I do not expect an answer, nor does any come. Despite our anxiety, we hear nothing from Alford until, one day a month later, Colonel Fane comes over. Claire has been with Lady Montagu ever since. Her grief for her son was terrible to witness, she wrote. As for Sir Charles (Sir Charles! I cannot recognize him by that name), he is most dreadfully cut up: she would never have given him credit for such deep feeling. He started at once for Naples, to bring his brother's body home, but the blue sea had never "given up her dead." When he returned, he was in wretched spirits. The only thing he took the least interest in was looking over Hector's plans of improvement for the poor, and giving orders for their being carried into execution. It was the saddest house she had ever been in. All this Colonel Fane told us. Poor Claire! I thought of her pain too,--her grief for the man she had loved all her life through,--grief the harder to bear since it could not be openly avowed save as a sorrow for a friend. There was one question I longed to put, yet dared not. Was he engaged to the heiress?

Ever since September have I been haunted by the fear of hearing the news which, far apart as we already are, would make the gulf quite impassable. And so the days crawl on, and I try with all my might to shut the thought of him out of my heart,---the thought that he is within a few miles of me,--that he might so easily, just for old friendship's sake, ride over and see me. Colonel Fane comes again: this time he tells us that Lady Montagu and Sir Charles are both going away from the Court for some months. My heart sinks within me. Why should it, since I knew he could never be anything to me?

May has come round again,--May, with her lavish fullness of life, so great a part of which must never come to fruition, but die before the summer sun shines upon it. O Nature! why this waste of life and death? why this heedless neglect of the children thou bringest forth?

I am on my way to the village, to sit an hour with a girl who is dying of decline. Papa has gone to spend the day with the Fanes: the blacksmith has lamed my horse in shoeing, or I was to have gone too. I am walking along the lane which skirts our park, under the shade of the trees, in which is every bright and tender shade of spring green. In the distance a horseman is coming towards me. As I first catch sight of him, I think it is papa returning, but as he comes nearer, my heart gives a great throb, half of pleasure, half pain: right well I know now to whom that gracious form belongs.

Captain--Colonel--nay, Sir Charles Montagu draws rein as he comes up to me. He is handsomer than ever, though he looks so pale and careworn; but perhaps he only seems so to me because my eyes have ached so long for the sight of him. Dismounting, he extends his hand, into which I put my tremulous one. I dare hardly look at him, lest my tell-tale eyes should betray to him how unutterably glad I am to see him again. Even he, so self-possessed from long habit and contact with the world, seems a shade embarrassed when our first commonplace greeting is over.

"How is Lady Montagu?" I ask, hurriedly.

"Poor mother!" he answers; "she is quite broken down. I am going to get her away from Alford as soon as I can. She will never be any better so long as she is there. And!" (with energy),--"I perfectly loathe the place. I was on my way to Carew Court," he adds, after a pause: "may I go on with you, or will it be taking you out of the way?"

He leads his horse, and we walk along together under the green branches. Their leaves are small and young yet, and the gold sunshine floods them through and under and over. It is a rare May morning, such a one as he and I pleased ourselves by calling golden once,--a long time ago. Does he remember it? He gives no sign. Why does the first line of the second verse haunt me all the way as we walk side by side to the house,--

"Ah, but the years brought changes after"?

Has not this year been fruitful of changes? Has there not been "care on the lips that curved with laughter," and tears--ay, bitter ones--in the eyes, whether "radiant" or no? We do not say very much on the way home, nor until the groom has taken his horse and we are in the house. How many a time have I pictured him here,--pictured myself inordinately happy at his presence! and yet to-day I feel constrained, weighed upon; he does too, I think. The May sun shines full into the room, exposing mercilessly the threadbare state of the carpet, the faded hues of the curtains. As my thoughts travel back to the costly perfection of his rooms, I feel for a moment ashamed of the evidences of our poverty. Why should I? He knows--has always known--we are poor.

He comes and sits down by me on the sofa.

"I have been coming here ever so many times," he utters, in a low voice, turning his eyes full on my face, "only I could not pluck up heart. It seems horrible to think of being happy when Hector, poor fellow----"

He breaks off without finishing the sentence.

What does he mean? My heart flutters and trembles within me, the color shifts uneasily in my face, my eyes are drooped away from him. Oh, kind heaven! let me not mistake him!--let me not imagine more meaning underlying his words than he would have me! I feel him take my hand, his other arm is thrown round me, his lips are on mine, and my eyes close for one intense moment.

"To feel the arms of my true love
Round me once again."

Ah! is not all my sorrow, all my pain, wiped out, paid, more than paid, in that one short supreme moment of time?

"Darling," he whispers, "do you think all this time that I must have seemed such a despicable brute in your eyes, I haven't loved and longed for you?"

I have no answer for him but tears,--tears, foolish tears,--the symbol of sorrow, but of great joy too. And mine are all for joy. Where is my pride? what has become of my rage against his cruelties, my indignation, my bitter resentment of his treatment? Here he but opens his arms to me, and I fly to them, with no womanly subterfuge, no temporizing, but only a great unfeigned joy that he comes to me at last. But these thoughts do not trouble me at the moment,--only afterwards, too late, when he is gone.

"Do you know," he says, still holding my hand, "what Hector's last wish, his last injunction to me, was? He had a presentiment that he should not come back. I laughed at it then, little thinking, poor fellow, how soon it was to come true; and his last charge was that I should ask you to be my wife, and that I would look after the people at Alford and carry out his plans. And I will, so help me God!" he adds, earnestly, whilst a dimness comes over his deep-blue eyes. "And you will help me, darling, won't you?--he said you knew his wishes better than any one else."

A chill creeps over me. I scarcely know why, a dark cold suspicion that he is fulfilling a duty to his dead brother shadows painfully in my heart, else why has he not come before?

"And Lady Montagu?" I ask, doubtfully.

"My mother does not know." he answers. "I have not dared to tell her yet. Fond as she has always been of you, she thinks----"

"Yes," I say, quickly, "thinks----"

"That you were the cause of Hector going abroad. My poor darling" (taking my hand and kissing it tenderly), "it is no fault of yours that you should inspire such passionate love, and I don't think any of us ever gave poor Hector credit for the deep feeling we now know he had."

As he speaks, the memory of Hector's wan eager face comes to me, and contrasts itself with the fair, handsome, unimpassioned one before me. But Hector was pleading with the power of despair, and this one,--this one has but to ask and have, nay, to have love showered upon him.

"I have made a resolve," continues Sir Charles--no, I cannot call him that--Charlie. "I've been an irresolute, self-indulgent fellow all my life, and now I want--oh, little one" (earnestly), "you can't think how I want to be better for his sake and yours, for I know how likely I am to slip hack into my old ways again. I'm not gifted with what they call moral courage. I've always found it so easy just to do what was pleasant to me, and not bother my head about whether it was right or wrong. I never had any responsibilities, you know,--never expected to have any. But, looking over poor Hector's papers, I came across a letter from him to me to be opened after his death, and in it he said he knew I should be awfully cut up for a bit after his death, but that the impression would soon die out, and that I should probably only think of making the place gay and pleasant and spending all the money on myself, and forget the poor, and perhaps let a bailiff grind them down; and he begged and entreated me to look into matters myself, and try to do some good, as he meant to do if he had lived. It was all quite true, and I felt it," Charlie goes on, with a shaky voice. "I have no faith in myself, but I do want to do what's right, and I want some good little soul like you to show me the way. And you will, won't you, dearest? But now," he hurries on, "I am going away, going just because I want to try and exercise self-control, because there is nothing in this world I should like so much as stopping here and making love to you, only I feel that to be happy and forget him, poor fellow, all the time that I am reaping the benefits of his death, seems inhuman. And now, when you have promised to be mine, and I have your promise to live on for the next few dreary months, I am going away from Alford, going to travel with my mother, going to do anything that will make the time pass quickest until I can come back to you."

He takes both my hands, and looks into my eyes the look that has looked my heart away long ago, and whispers,--

"Tell me, darling, may I hope?"

Across me there comes a bitter regret that I am so poor a creature I cannot control my evident joy and gladness to be his. His question, "May I hope?" is a farce; and by the involuntary consciousness in his eyes I see he knows it. Yet, to save, it may be, some poor semblance of dignity, I say, averting my face from him,--

"Are you asking me for my own sake, or is it only because your brother wished it?"

My hands are still in the clasp of his. He presses them tighter, and whispers,--

"Look into my eyes, and ask me that again."

I look into the blue depths, as I am told, with an eager, searching gaze, and fancy I read in them the answer my soul would fain have.

"Are you satisfied, little unbelieving one?" he asks. And with that he kisses me once again lingeringly, and rises to go.

"Are you going?" I ask, with a feeling of unspeakable disappointment.--"going already?"

"Yes," he answers, sighing. "Don't you remember what I told you?--I haven't the heart to let myself be happy yet, with the thought of that poor fellow gone to his miserable death. Good-by, little darling. I know you'll be faithful to me until I come back; but kiss me once more and tell me so."

My eyes fill with tears. To have found him only to lose him again,--it seems almost too cruel a pain to bear.

"You will write to me," I plead, "once now and then, that I may be sure what has happened to-day is not all a dream?"

"Of course I will write. Why, child, I believe you are only half convinced yet how I love you."

"And," I say, hesitating, hardly liking to say it, feeling as if it looked like an attempt on my part to prevent his escaping from his word, "may I--may I tell papa, or" (hastily) "would you rather I did not?"

He pauses for a moment before answering.

"You do not wish it?" I say, only anxious to do that which shall be pleasing to him.

"You shall do what you think best, darling," he answers. "I could not speak to him myself so soon after poor Hector's death; and I would not for the world my mother should hear of it yet, nor from any lips but mine. Trust me until I come back." And the blue eyes look lovingly at me, so that I forget everything but that his will is my law. "Do you think," he adds, "it won't be hard enough for me to go away from my happiness just when I have found it?"