Chapter XLV: Diana's Story

How poor words are, how all inadequate to express the great joys and sorrows of our lives! Is it not proof of this that when we are (how rarely!) overtaken by great gladness, we say we are _unutterably_ happy?--if we want to describe anything, either of pleasure or pain, transcending the common limits of every-day experience, we are reduced to saying, "words fail to express," etc. Is there some language among the dead ones in which bygone ages could pour out the torrent of their joys and woes without being hampered by the paucity of superlatives which afflicts me at this moment? I give it up. I cannot tell you how happy I am,--so happy that a vein of fear runs through my gladness that such utter bliss cannot last. It is no dream: I am wide, wide awake, and Charlie is sitting opposite to me. He wished to sit next me, but I begged him to sit opposite instead, though I was too shy to tell him why. It is because I want to see him, to feast my eyes on his face with my old insatiable love of good looks. And now I need never again steal furtive glances at the bright debonnair face. I may fix my eyes upon it without dropping them guiltily when they meet his. Are the rest of the party cheerful and merry, I wonder? I hardly know: our spirits are so exuberant, after our long famine of mirth, that if none of the others unclosed their lips, it must needs have seemed a cheery gathering. Papa looks very bright, I remark: is it from the contagion of my happiness, or from some secret gladness of his own? Ah, I can wish him joy now without the shadow of a selfish regret creeping in to mar the genuineness of my sympathy. One's father naturally seems older to me than any other man of the same age, but, now I come to think of it, there is hardly more difference between his age and Claire's than between Charlie's and mine.

Claire comes running into my room just before dinner.

"My dear," she whispers, her pretty face beaming with kindness and congratulation, "how glad I am at your happiness! Did I not tell you to trust, and all would be well?"

"Ah, Claire," I cry, flinging my arms round her, "I can't tell you how utterly happy I am. Was there ever any one in this world so fortunate as I? I am quite sorry I abused the poor world, when it is, after all, the happiest, delightfulest place one can imagine."

"Do not forget, dearest, where all your thanks are due," she says, softly, and, kissing me once again heartily, goes out. _I do not forget_! On my knees I am thanking God with all the intensity of which my heart is capable for his exceeding goodness to me. There is one person who does not seem quite to share the general gladness. That is Colonel Fane. He is preoccupied at dinner, and goes off alone afterwards with his cigar. It is a glorious moonlight night. Charlie and I wander back to the place of our meeting. Ah, what a night!--a night to live over again in memory all the nights of one's life, if one lived to be as old as Methuselah, sure, quite sure, that even in the longest, happiest life there could never come two such. Dark pine-clad mountains standing out against the sapphire sky, bright waters flashing back the moon's streaming silver, nightingales answering each other from tree to tree, and my hands clasped upon the arm of the one man the world has ever held, will ever hold, for me. And this time last night--nay, only five short hours ago,--he seemed as far removed from me, as unattainable, as that glorious evening star yonder.

"Little darling," says the voice of my beloved, presently, "are you quite sure you have nothing on your conscience to confess to me?"

"On my conscience!" I repeat, slowly turning my willing and most guiltless eyes to his.

The mere sound of his voice is delightful to me, even if it were propounding the Sphinx's riddle. That does not seem much more impossible to guess than his present meaning.

"Are you quite sure," with a little jealous accent that delights me,--"are you quite sure you have not been flirting just a very little bit with Fane?"

"_I!_" I answer, in a tone wherein astonishment and reproach do battle royal for victory.

"Little darling, of course I know you did not," he answers, hastily; "only he is evidently most confoundedly put out by my appearance on the scene. Did you not notice how glum and silent he was at dinner? Such a cheery fellow as he is usually."

"Absurd!" I answer, with scorn. "Colonel Fane looks upon me as a brother."

"Oh, does he?" answers my lover, with an amused smile. "You little innocent child" (taking my face between his hands and looking straight into my eyes), "I think a man would be puzzled to be with you long and keep up that useful little fiction of fraternal feeling."

He is quite mistaken in his supposition; but it pleases me, since it shows the value he sets upon me,--pleases me far better than if it were true. I never want to know the pain again of being loved by a man to whose affection I can make no return.

It is decided that we are still to continue our Swiss trip, but to be at home again by the time Curly leaves Eton, instead of his joining us abroad, as had been proposed when the thought of returning to Carew Court had been so hateful to me. I shall always love Switzerland better than any country save my own,--not for the sake of her beauty only, but in memory of the happy days I spent on her glorious heights, in her tranquil valleys, on her blue lakes, by her silver streams, in her quaint old towns. I know not when or where I was happiest:--if it was gliding along the lakes, with the red sunset kindling the waters into flame and purpling the mountain-sides; in the delicious Vevay gardens, listening to the entrancing strains of the string hand; driving along the lovely valley of the Arve, where the water leaps flashing against the sunshine; at Chamouni, in glorious sight of the great snow-king, standing against the clear blue sky; among the lovely scenery from Argentiers to Martigny, with its wealth of wild flowers and ferns, crystal streams, luxuriant trees, and distant view of the sharp aiguilles, with their myosotis-colored background. Every scene is indelibly fixed on my mind, every spot we visited,--the ice-caves, green and transparent as our English seas at calm, the awe-striking Gorge de Trient, where I fell into a panic lest we two, in the zenith of our happiness, should be engulfed in the black seething waters, sweet Lucerne, peaceful Inturlachen, pretty, picturesque Thun, quaint old Berne, Ouches, Lausanne,--all the lovely haunts of fair Helvetia. We were early in the season, and did not meet many of our own country-people,--a chance bride and bridegroom, generally French or German, whom we regarded, Charlie and I with furtive sympathy, a few Americans, pretty, well _chaussées_ and well dressed, and a few Russians. Everywhere we go, my generous lover insists upon heaping me with presents, until at last I rebel.

"Don't think me ungracious," I plead, "but when you give me all these beautiful things which I have not been used to, and don't want, it makes me quite unhappy. If" (with a slight accent of reproach) "I did not care for you, and you were trying to win me over by gifts, there might be something in it; but when you know----" And my eyes, to spare the modesty of my lips, finish the sentence.

"Little darling," he says, in answer, "don't you think it's rather selfish of you to deprive me of the greatest pleasure I have in the world?"

That journey, than which none was ever more sadly begun, more triumphantly concluded, comes to an end at last. We are on English shores and in London. Charlie and I separate with bitter reluctance, though it is only for a week or two, whilst he joins his mother and brings her hack to Alford. When Curly has gone back to Eton for his last term, I am to go to Alford for a short visit, and in October we are to be married.

"It seems an eternity to October," he grumbles; "but of course you are right; we must not seem to have forgotten poor Hector." And a shadow comes across his clear brow.

Curly is delighted, when he has shaken off one or two loyal regrets for his friend Lord Seldon.

"I think he's getting over it," he whispers me, with a sagacious nod. "I introduced him this Eton and Harrow match to one of Archdale's sisters,--Viola, the dark one; and, considering that he swore he'd never have anything to do with a woman again, he seemed to be getting on pretty well. One thing, he had the right one to help him: he won't ask Miss Viola to share his coronet in vain. Oh, Di! how could you be such a little donkey? Not but what Charlie's a stunning good fellow; only I should have liked to see you a duchess. And the Dad too!--only fancy the Dad getting spoony at his time of life!" (for Claire has consented to marry papa when I have left the old home). "I'm rather glad as it has turned out. She's so awfully sweet and good, Claire, she won't be trying to set the Dad against us, like most step-mothers would. And then," adds Curly, practically, "that five hundred a year of hers will be very useful to them: it isn't as if she had nothing; and the old place would have been awfully dull without a woman."

I am going to divide my three hundred a year between papa and Curly, for Charlie refuses to have me as a dowered bride, in however small a degree, and I,--I love to owe everything to him. So he has combated my father's and brother's objections, and insists upon having his own way in this matter, at all events.

My first meeting with Lady Montagu is a painful one,--we both cry floods of tears; but, after we have been together a few days, she steals behind me, and, taking my head between her small white fingers, she kisses it, and in a tone tremulous with emotion, whispers,--

"Do not think, my child, that I love you the less because my manner has been a little constrained towards you lately. I could not quite forget" (with a sob) "poor Hector. But there is no one in the world I should love so much to have for a daughter."

My wedding-day has come: it dawns clear and bright, with an Italian sky, and the glorious warmth of July. Gay is radiant at this auspicious omen. "Happy is the bride that the sun shines on!" she chirps, over and over again, as, with loving fingers whose alacrity is a little delayed by joyful agitation, she apparels me in my bridal gear. The new maid is not allowed to lay one finger upon me so long as I am Diana Carew. I am Gay's own child, that she has brought up from my very tenderest youth, and no one, she and I resolve, shall supersede her so long as I am still the child of the house. Gay is in raptures, then, because the sun shines; but I--! The sun can add no joy to mine; a deluge could hardly take from it; but of course it is far better that everything should go smoothly and auspiciously.

It is to be a very quiet wedding, no one but ourselves,--papa, Lady Montagu, Curly, Claire (Colonel Fane is away), and Lord Rexborough, who is to be best man. He and I are tremendous friends since Curly's accident. I understand him so much better, and his manner is so far gentler and less rough than it used to be. I confess frankly to having misjudged him: he has a thoroughly kind heart under that rough exterior, which was more affected than natural, I verily believe.

The sun shines with a hearty good will upon us, shines in a flood through the stained window over the altar, and plays a thousand pranks with my white attire, decking it with vivid, unbride-like blue and red, green and gold. But I am so confident of my future happiness that I would have gone to church clad in black from head to foot with profound indifference. There are no other wedding guests, save my poor, who have collected in force at the lower end of the church, and in the church-yard. As I go out leaning on the arm of my husband, of whom I feel so utterly, unspeakably proud, they press forward with hearty blessings and good will. The unbidden tears rush to my eyes: these sincere good wishes seem better worth having to me than the congratulations of half a dozen of dukes and duchesses.

They are to have a dinner when we are gone, which will be as soon after the wedding as I can put off my bride's dress and don my traveling-garb; for we are going up to town by the two o'clock train, and have to drive six miles to the station.

Dearly as I love my husband, fearlessly as I face the unknown future with him, how can I yet leave the Dad and my boy without a twinge of keenest pain? I have kept up bravely until now, have wished every one good-by with ready smiles, but now that it comes to those two my eyes are dim, my voice falters. Have I not lived all the years of my life with my father? have not we shared our cares and loved each other with the heartiest love wherewith a father and child can love? Never has one of us harbored an unkind thought of the other, never has a cross word passed his lips to me, nor a petulant one mine to him. And our boy, whom we have loved with all our hearts, whom our tears and prayers have brought back from the doors of death! How can I leave these two without emotion? I can _not_. Tears blind my eyes, sobs choke my throat, as I throw my arms first round one then the other; and their eyes, too, though with manly shame they try hard to smile, their eyes are dim, their dear voices that bid me such hearty "God speed" quiver and tremble; and I, the happiest, proudest woman in England, am helped into the carriage by the man I love with all my heart, in floods of tears as though I were the saddest, unwillingest bride in the world.

"Little darling," whispers my handsome husband, as we drive away,--he always calls me thus; he does not like my name,--"you shall never have any cause for tears that I can prevent, I swear. Look at me; tell me you are not afraid to trust the future with me."

I look into his deep-blue eyes and smile through my tears. If but half of the great love and confidence I have in him is written in mine, he must needs be content with what he reads.

I think he is.