Chapter XLIII: Diana's Story

Papa does not for an instant hesitate to yield to my wish to go away. I think, indeed, he would have proposed it if I had not done so. And now the money difficulty does not stand between us and the fulfillment of our wish, as it would have done this time last year. The Fanes are going to Switzerland, and have already urged us to join them. Now papa writes to ask Colonel Fane if it would be agreeable to them to have our companionship, and receives a quick response in the affirmative. Ere ten days have passed, I have turned my back upon my own country, indifferent in my misery, save for Curly's sake, whether I ever behold it again. On the day I leave England I inclose the letter, with its anonymous companion, to Sir Charles. At first I thought of sending them without any addition from me, and letting them tell their own tale; but on this point I change my mind. I would not have him think I blame him for being unable to love me. So I add these lines:

"DEAR SIR CHARLES,--

"The letters I inclose will speak for themselves. Of course I know you never intended the one in your writing to fall into my hands, and I am quite sure you will be very sorry it has done so. You acted very generously in asking me to be your wife, you have done your duty to your brother, and can have nothing to reproach yourself with. It is I who positively refuse to marry you: do not make any attempt to shake my resolve,--it would be utterly useless, and only put us both to unnecessary pain. When you get this, I shall be out of England. Do not try to find out where I am. I have left most urgent directions with the only two people who know, not to tell you. I hope you may be very happy.

"Yours sincerely,
"DIANA CAREW."

So, in this lame, cold effusion, I take my leave of the man who has had all the love of my young heart,--who has taken it and left me bankrupt.

The Fanes are very kind: they affect not to notice my sad and altered demeanor, but ere long in my desperate need of sympathy I fly for comfort to Claire's loving pity. For, though she is outwardly as bright and cheerful as ever, I know right well that it is from a sense of duty, not from any spontaneous gayety. My tutored eyes discern how surely the iron has entered her soul too. And, like the angel that she is, she ministers her sweet pity and consolation to my sorrow, and I am comforted by it. She says I have done right. What else could I do when the knowledge came to me that he was only sacrificing himself to a sense of duty and had no love to give me? Surely fate was in a bitter mood when she thrust upon me the power of making myself passionately beloved where I could give no return, and withheld it when it would have made fair all my life. If I were only good like Claire! I cannot kiss the rod as she would have me, as she does herself. I cannot thank God for my ruined life. The most I can do is to try hard, oh, how hard! not to rebel too violently.

"My dear," she whispers, with her soft kind arms about my neck, and her tears falling in sympathy with mine, "you will see it yet. I know how hard, how almost impossible it seems at first to see anything but cruelty and injustice in these bitter trials; but if only you do not harden your heart, you will see the love of God in it some day, and be able to say, 'It is well.'"

Until now it has never been difficult for me to love God and pray to him; reverence for all that is good and great is a part of my nature; in a humble, childlike way, I have looked up to my Father in heaven and asked of him, as I have been bidden, those gifts that I have desired. I have brought to his footstool all my cares but this one; how dared I bring my earthly love? I have been taught that I must love God first before all others; and how then could I pray for his sanction to my setting up an idol before him and worshiping it with that rapt passionate love which our earth-cloyed souls give so easily and naturally to mortals, and whose intensity is in measure and degree so far beyond the devout and reverential but cold love we offer to the Deity? My talks with Claire, however, do me good: it must indeed be a hard nature on which her sweet goodness could leave no impress. She is so bright, so kindly, so humble; there is none of the austerity of conscious goodness about her; she is not afraid to laugh and be merry lest she should detract from her character for saintliness. I have heard men speak against women, accuse them of envy, malice, littleness. I would like them to know Claire, to see her appreciation of goodness, talent, or beauty in others, her quick, glad recognition of excellence wherever shown. Her affection does not hang upon the mediocrity of her friends, as I am told (by men) that most women's does.

There is at all events one person who thoroughly appreciates her,--her brother.

"Ah," he said, one day, when we were talking about her "if there were more women like Claire going about the world what a much more tolerable--indeed, what a much happier--place it would be! But, unfortunately, most good women are dull, and many bright women are--well, not exactly what you would call good; so that it does not very often fall to a man's lot to see one like Claire who, is good, charitable, unselfish, and the merriest, brightest companion all in one."

If I were to add what Colonel Fane added to this,--not, I must confess, with any truth or justice, but that I might not feel myself left out in the cold,--I suppose I might draw down upon my foolish head the condemnation wherewith I visited the egotism of Miss Harriet Byron. We are in Paris, _en route_ for Switzerland. Colonel Fane and his sister find it sadly altered since the war; but to me, who have never seen the Queen of Cities before, and to papa, who only remembers it, in the first days of the great unhappy Emperor who (let no man forget) made her what she is, it seems the gayest, the most beautiful city the mind of man could imagine. How marvelously buoyant and volatile must be the French nature, to stand erect so soon from the weight of such crushing misfortunes!

Our first destination after Paris is Geneva, which we have agreed to make our headquarters. It strikes us as being dull after Paris, and the glare is frightful. The evenings on the lake are pleasant, and I like to stand on the bridge and look down at the blue rushing Rhone, deep and blue as his eyes. Colonel Fane is kindness itself: he takes such care of me, and never seems to forget anything that could add to my comfort. For the last few days a suspicion has begun to dawn on me that papa is falling in love with Claire. Dearly as I love her, the very thought gives me a twinge of jealous pain; we have always been first with him, Curly and I, and, now that I have no one left but my father, it seems cruel to think of losing him. I try hard not to be selfish. I remind myself of the sad lonely life he has led. I can see plainly enough how bright Claire might make his future; and yet--yet the thought of giving up the châtelaineship of home, however poor an office it may seem in the eyes of others, is grievous and bitter to me. I begin to watch her narrowly, in the endeavor to discover what her feelings for him are, and I fancy that sometimes her bright eyes are brighter still, and the delicate pink in her face deepens when he appeals to her, as he often does.

Some one has strongly recommended to us the ascent of Les Voirons, some mountains near Geneva, where we are told is a charming hotel, and one of the loveliest views in Switzerland. Papa and Colonel Fane decide upon our spending a day or two up there, and accordingly we set forth on our journey. If the result repaid us, we agreed before reaching our destination, we should be fortunate, for great were the disagreeables, not to say perils, we encountered _en route_. We drove from Geneva to Bergue, where we arrived in a deluge of rain, and found nothing but a wretched and most uninviting auberge. Mine host was about the most ill-looking and surly individual conceivable: if we had been in Italy instead of honest Switzerland, our minds might have undergone some apprehensions as to our safety, more especially as there was a great open trap-door in the room into which we were rudely ushered. After alternate threats and persuasions, Colonel Fane wrung a promise of a steed apiece for Claire and myself: they themselves would have to walk. Our surly host went to fetch the horses from the plow, and in about an hour we were mounted and off. The sensation was like what I should imagine riding on a dromedary might be. There was scarcely any footing, at times; it was about as easy as riding up a ladder cut in a rock. Suddenly, as we were nearing our journey's end, Claire's horse stumbled and threw her. There was no more doubt in my mind after that what papa felt for her: the agonized expression of his face, as he bent over her, would have told me plainly enough if I had never guessed it before. Most fortunately, she is not hurt, but she refuses to mount again, and performs the rest of the journey leaning on papa's arm; whilst my eyes, half jealous, half kindly, follow them. I fancy Colonel Fane is sad and out of sorts too; perhaps he also suspects something, and is reluctant to lose Claire. He may well be that.

At last we reach the hotel, and, glad as we are to get there, with the darkness coming on, we begin to think lugubriously that we have been "let in." It is too dark to see the view; we are the first visitors of the season; it is damp and chilly, and there are no fires anywhere. But two hours later, when we have dined by no means badly, and are sitting round the blazing wood fire, we are able to take a more cheerful view of things; and the next day, which is gloriously bright and sunny, we are fain to admit, after having explored the neighborhood, that we were not victims to a heartless practical joke, as we at first dismally conceived ourselves.

It is afternoon of the second day after our arrival. My heart is sad and bitter within me, and I creep away from the rest of the party and wend my way alone through the pines to a solitary spot, where I may nurse my sorrow all, all alone. To say that the day and scene are glorious, is to give but very poor and faint expression to my sense of their beauty; but what other words can I find? Down in sultry, glaring Geneva to-day the heat would be unbearable; walking along the white, hot streets, unless provided with a dense blue veil, the sun would scorch up one's eyes and face. But up here, so much nearer to him, one can bear his fervent kiss unsheltered by veil or parasol: his fierceness is tempered to delicious warmth by the soft cool winds that come from heaven across the brow of the snow-king. I throw myself upon the short green turf, all gay with myriad eyes of pink, blue, and yellow, an "enameled sward" indeed, and let my eyes wander down the valley to the white glistening town, the lovely lake, blue as a deep-colored forget-me-not, with the serpent windings of the Rhone flowing into it. The dark chain of the Jura stretches away in front of me: on all sides are mountains, some velvety green and pine-crowned, some bare and sterile, and away, far off, but clear against the blue sky, garbed in his unchanging white garment, stands Mont Blanc. Green and fair is the valley beneath; sweet odors rise from the mountain's pine-clad sides, and the birds are singing up in these heights joyously and tunefully as they sing in our woods at home. Is not nature fair? and yet its fairness cannot make my soul less sad,--nay, rather more so. There is only one thing that seems happiness to me to-day,--oblivion, nothingness, to shut one's eyes once forever on a scene some such as this, and never through all the countless ages to unclose them again. I have lost the power of realizing a happy future: all life, all existence, it seems to me, must be marred with some pain. Then the thought comes to me with grim irony that now my life is done, my father's is beginning. God knows I do not begrudge him any happiness, only----

My swift thoughts fly back to the one love of my life,--the foolish, unhappy, but, oh! I think, the faithfulest love a woman ever gave to man. How can I live through all the long dull years without him,--the great appalling number of years that I have yet to crawl through before I reach the allotted number of threescore and ten? And yet life is called brief,--fleeting. Why, to me a year seems an eternity. A year! Where shall I be this time next year? and _he_,--where will he be? Married to the woman he loves, whispers my heart. Oh, heaven! what has _she_ done to deserve so glad, so blest a fate, and what have I done to inherit mine? The thought is too much for me. I fling myself prone on the short sweet turf. I tear with ruthless hands the jeweled eyes from their green head, and cry and sob to heaven to pity or to slay me, since I cannot longer endure the aching agony of life without him.

My rage of pain has spent itself at last: my sobs come fitfully. There is a sound of voices in the distance, and I rise and turn to flee. For pride's sake, I would not be seen with the traces of my late violent emotion upon me. I walk hurriedly along the mountain's slope. Suddenly a voice utters my name,--a voice whose sound sends the blood rushing to my brain and my heart leaping to my throat. I turn. Where are my senses? am I dreaming? Oh, kind heaven, if it be so, let me never wake again! He is here, my lost love who has so cruelly torn my heart in twain. His arms are round me; his gentian-colored eyes are looking into mine,--mine that I know are spoiled and marred with tears,--and yet I care not; vanity, grief, all are forgotten in this supreme moment in which I forecast Paradise. Does what I say sound too strong? Ah! but if you ever loved with all your heart and soul, loved and lost, and found your love again! No single question comes to my lips. I care not to know why or how he came. I have forgotten that other woman whom he loved. With his arms about me, his lips pressed to mine, every doubt, every fear, is gone; by the passionate emotion of his voice as he whispers the sweetest words my hungered ears ever heard, by the quivering of his strong arms that bind me, do I not know, let what will have gone before, though he may have seemed indifferent in bygone days, that he loves me now?--not, perhaps, as I love him,--nay, how can a heart that has loved often feel the intense devotion of the one that has but known a single passion?--but _he loves me_. That is enough for me! I am content. It is well,--passing well. If I had not known the wild misery of the last three weeks, could I have tasted the utter exquisite joy of to-day, with the blue sky above me, and the fair valley beneath, the sweet birds' song, the scented air, and above all, without which sights and scents and sounds were barren so short a while ago, "the arms of my true love round me once again."