Chapter XLII: Diana's Story

He is gone,--gone! and I am sitting at the window, in the full hot sunshine, trying to think. Is it real? I pinch myself, as I have read in books of people doing to make sure they are awake. That is hardly a good test, though, for in some happy dreams I have similarly assured myself of the reality of my own wakefulness. Well, there is no mistake this time. I, Diana Carew, am in full wide-awake possession of all the senses that have been bestowed upon me. I feel the warm sunshine on my face and throat, I hear the sweet jubilance of the birds and the sonorous hum of the big handsome bees, I see the chestnut-tree that looks like a gigantic chandelier with its thousands of wax candles, and the green fields yonder all golden with buttercups, and I smell the heavy-scented azaleas, the lilacs, and the wallflowers. And, since I last looked out, that has come to pass which, in my wildest dreams of possible bliss, has never taken the shape in which it comes real to me to-day. The man whom I have loved with all my love, loved unswervingly in good report and evil report, has come to me, come, not poor, with the thought of sacrificing himself in coming, but gifted with many gifts. He has asked me to be his wife, a fate than which none in this world can seem to me more altogether blissful or to be desired. And yet I am not happy. Truly there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. As my mind shapes the sentence that the great humorist has made immortally ridiculous, I cannot help thinking how Curly, a couple of years ago, used to weary our ears with its constant iteration, notably, "And though the Christy Minstrels never perform out of London, yet I am not happy." I smile in memory of my boy, and then my thoughts return to graver considerations.

I have let him go without satisfying myself on a hundred points. Whilst he was with me, the joyful fact of his presence made me oblivious of all else; but now that he is gone, and I can think seriously, cruel doubts rise up and array themselves against me. With their winged shafts they pierce every joint in the armor of my loving confidence. How is it possible that he can have come to care for me so suddenly, when last autumn he could treat me with systematic indifference, even making love to another woman before my eyes,--when in the preceding summer he could coldly avoid me and take an interest in another man's love for me? Why, too, had he delayed so long to come to me, when he was so near me? How could he go away from me now and wish his proposal to be kept secret? The more I think over it, the stronger grows the ugly doubt in my heart of his love for me. He has come to-day under the influence of his regret for his brother, to fulfill his last wish. At last I see how Hector loved me, and a bitter yearning regret for him fills my heart. As a mountain to a mole-hill, his love stands in comparison with Charlie's. What greater proof of love could I have had than his conquering the feeling that was the bitterest of his life,--the thought of my being his brother's wife! At last, too late, I see the full nobility and generosity of his character: what can I do now but weep blinding tears of unavailing regret? And yet, could I summon him back in the flesh, I know I could never have loved him with the love he craved: to marry him would have been not one whit less a sacrifice, from which I should have shrunk as much now as then.

But to have gained happiness, such happiness as I had never dreamed of, and for the taste of it to be like ashes in my mouth! After long and painful thought, I decide upon keeping the event of to-day a secret even from papa; a painful prescience comes to me that this happiness will never be fulfilled. So I content myself with telling him that Sir Charles Montagu has been over to call, and, after a few indifferent questions about him, papa drops the subject. There is one great hope to which I cling; he will write to me, and in his letters perhaps he will say something to satisfy my hungry heart.

A few days after our interview, his first letter comes. It is only a short one, principally about his mother, and their plans for the summer. It ends thus:

"Dearest, if you think this letter cold and indifferent, I have tried to make it so. I feel as if we both owe it to Hector not to let ourselves be happy and forget him yet."

As I read, my miserable unbelief in him grows stronger. _He does not love me_. His is not a nature to be acted upon by any such scruples as he pretends; the first element of his sensuous, indolent nature is to indulge himself in everything that pleases him: if (and I go back to the sentence of his which has always galled me so bitterly)--if he could never be ten minutes alone with a woman without wanting to make love to her, could he be cool and indifferent towards the woman he really loved and meant to make his wife? My heart indignantly rejects the idea.

"No, no, no! he does not love me!" I say to myself, bitterly, "any more than he did last summer, last autumn." I do not answer his letter; I cannot; what should I say?--but I dig a grave for my new-born hopes, and give them decent burial, and try to smile, as if all the joy and hope of my life were not buried with them. Yet somewhere, as in Pandora's box, lying under all the doubts and fears and miseries, there is a little winged Hope lying, that his presence may kindle into life some day, if Fate be not too cruel. I do not even conjecture how strong it is until, one morning a fortnight later, a letter comes to me that slays it outright. The envelope is directed in a strange hand: inside there are a few words in the same writing, and inclosed is a letter from him. I read first the words in the unknown hand; "The sender thinks it only fair to Miss Carew that she should be made acquainted with the real state of Sir Charles Montagu's feelings."

Then, trembling and heart-sick, I go to my own room, and, locking myself in, read his letter twice over. This is it:

"MY DARLING,--

"After what has happened lately, how can I ever hope to make you think kindly of me again? To profess my love for you, and then to tell you I am going to marry another woman! But I promised my brother,--I gave him my sacred word; and how dare I go back from a promise made more sacred still by death? My own darling, I know you do love me, unworthy though I am of your sweet love. The thought that I shall never be anything more to you half breaks my heart. I love you. I do not love her,--need I tell _you_ that? If I had never given that hateful promise to Hector, we might have been so awfully happy now! Only, if I marry her,--and I hardly see how I can get out of it,--never think that I did not love you with all my heart and soul, and would have asked no greater happiness than to have you for my wife, if Fate had not been against us. She complains of my being unloverlike; if she could only know how utterly unloverlike I feel towards her! So, my darling,--for the last time I dare call you so,--good-by, and may your lot be a happier one than that to which I am miserably looking forward! C.M."

When I have read the letter twice through, I lay it down and lean my head upon my hands. I feel stunned, as though some one had struck me a heavy blow. One thought iterates itself again and again: Hector is revenged,--Hector is revenged! Ay, had I treated him with the wantonest, most heartless cruelty, had I laid myself out to win his love and then spurned it, he would yet be amply, fully revenged. How can we gauge our sorrows? I thought the hours when I believed my boy dying, the bitterest ever given mortal soul to know; but the anguish I feel now seems not less keen. To be spoken of by him with shuddering dislike,--to have inspired in him nor love nor liking,--to have been asked tardily, reluctantly to be his wife because he had given his word to his brother! Oh, it was an easy task to give him up for his own sake, that I might not mar his fortunes, when I thought he had some little love for me; but now, to give him up to another woman,--a woman he loves passionately,--loves as ardently as he is indifferent to me!

"What have I done to deserve this misery?" I cry, beating my hands together in an agony of pain and shame. "Oh, what have I done?--what have I done?"

I push my hair off my brow, and rub my hands hard against it, to try and still its throbbing. Is it like this, I wonder, that people begin to go mad? If I could only get away somewhere! I cannot stay in this place,--cannot go on leading this monotonous life. I will go to papa and beg him to take me away at once,--I care not where, if only it be a long, long way off. I am in a fever of impatience. I do not even step to look at myself in the glass nor to smooth my disheveled hair. I thrust the letter into my pocket and run swiftly downstairs to his study. He looks up from his writing as I enter, then, dropping his pen, cries,--

"Di, my child, what ails you?"

With an unconscious instinct I run to him, fling myself down before him, and bury my head in his knees. His kind arms are round me, and he murmurs, brokenly,--

"Poor little girl!--poor child!"

At his tender voice, at the sound of its great pity, I break into tears and sohs and bitter crying. In all my life I have never cried like this before.

And papa strokes my head, and presses my hands in his, and says, "For God's sake, child, do not cry like this! My poor little girl, what is it? What can I say to comfort you?"

I had not dreamed of this outburst. I meant to have come quietly and said to him, "Papa, I am not happy. I want you to take me away somewhere. Please do not ask me any questions;" but, somehow, at sight of him, at the sound of his kind voice, I break down.

What shall I tell him? What account shall I give of my bitter pain and grief?

He waits patiently as any woman until my sobs die away; then he says,--

"Tell me about it, dear. What makes you unhappy?"

But I am silent. How can I tell him?

He waits yet a little, and then, stroking my head fondly says,--

"Am I not your father? Who can feel for your pain as I do? If your mother were living, you would take your trouble to her; but, since she is dead" (sighing), "let me be father and mother both to you."

I would fain tell him, but the words will not come. How can one tell one's father of one's foolish, unreturned love?

"Do you think I never noticed," he goes on, "how changed you were after you first went to Warrington? Do you think a father can be so dull and blind as not to notice when his children suffer? Do you think, my poor little girl, I never guessed the cause of your unhappiness because it was out of my power to help you?"

At last my lips unclose.

"I will tell you," I cry, hurriedly; and, nerving myself with a great effort, my face turned away from him,--turned to the light where the cruel sun streams in unmindful of my heart's pain,--stammer out incoherently, sobbingly, painfully, my "plain, unvarnished tale."

"You know when I first went to Warrington, when I first met poor Sir Hector, his brother, Captain Montagu, was there. He could not help it" (with a sigh that nearly rives my chest asunder): "he was always used to see beautiful, fashionable women. What should he think about a little stupid country-girl? But I--I shall never care for any one again."

"So," says papa, in a low voice, "that was why you refused Sir Hector and Lord Seldon."

"Then," I proceed, becoming more and more embarrassed with my recital, and looking away for help out through the sunshine and the deep-colored roses to the far blue heaven, "then when I was at Alford he came home unexpectedly, and we were together a good deal. I don't know why" (my voice faltering), "perhaps--perhaps he could not help seeing I--I cared for him, but he asked me very generously to marry him."

"Well?" papa's voice is low and impatient.

"Well," I echo, reproachfully, "as if I would have let him burden himself with me who had nothing, when he had been used to every luxury all his life. No" (with a touch of pride): "he was willing to take me, but I would not have him."

Papa makes an impatient movement. I hurry on. "When I met him in town, he avoided me. I don't suppose" (sighing) "he ever had thought much about me, and then, you know, at the Desboroughs' every one thought he was going to marry the heiress. From that time until the other day when he came here I have never seen him."

"And is it possible," papa asks, wonderingly, "that you have gone on caring for him all this time, when he has never even kept up a pretense of thinking of you?"

His words stab me to the heart. I put my hands before my face to hide the fire of shame that burns my cheeks.

"He came the other day," I falter, "to ask me to marry him!"

"What!" cries papa, in a voice of utter astonishment.

"He came," I go on, coldly, not sparing myself, "because Hector's last wish was that he should marry me."

"Oh, Di, Di!" exclaims papa, in a low, unsteady voice; "where are your women's eyes and hearts, that you cannot appreciate such a noble fellow as that, but fritter away your love on one who is not worthy to be mentioned in the same year with him? Well" (impatiently), "and what did you say to him? Did you refuse him again for his own sake?"

"No," I mutter; "no."

"Well, then, in heaven's name, why did he not come to me, like an honorable man, and why are you in such grief to-day?"

"He did not speak to you," I return, hastening to defend the man I love, "because--because, poor Hector having been dead so short a time, he did not wish anything known yet. He thought it would look unfeeling."

"Oh!" utters papa, doubtfully. "But, Di, we have not come to the cause of your trouble yet."

"It is this," I cry, taking the letter and inclosed lines from my pocket and thrusting them into his hand.

He takes it, and while he reads I look up for the first time and scan his face. He makes no sign, utters no word; and yet his face is eloquent enough to me. I have seen enough. I hide my eyes with my hands.

"Poor little girl!" I hear him murmur, presently, in a broken voice.