CHAPTER XXII
Sir James Chide was giving tea to a couple of guests at Lytchett Manor.It was a Saturday in late September. The beech-trees visible through thedrawing-room windows were still untouched and heavily green; but theirtransformation was approaching. Soon, steeped in incredible splendors oforange and gold, they would stand upon the leaf-strewn grass, waitingfor the night of rain or the touch of frost which should at lastdisrobe them.
"If you imagine, Miss Ettie," said Sir James, severely, to a young ladybeside him, "that I place the smallest faith in any of Bobbie's remarksor protestations--"
The girl addressed smiled into his face, undaunted. She was a smallelfish creature with a thin face, on the slenderest of necks. But in herqueer little countenance a pair of laughing eyes, out of all proportionto the rest of her for loveliness and effect, gave her and kept her theattention of the world. They lent distinction--fascination even--to acharacter of simple virtues and girlish innocence.
Bobbie lounged behind her chair, his arms on the back of it. He took SirJames's attack upon him with calm. "Shall I show him the letter of mybeastly chairman?" he said, in the girl's ear.
She nodded, and Bobbie drew from his breast-pocket a folded sheet ofblue paper, and pompously handed it to Sir James.
The letter was from the chairman of a leading bank in Berlin--a man wellknown in European finance. It was couched in very civil terms, andcontained the offer to Mr. Robert Forbes of a post in the Lindner bank,as an English correspondence clerk, at a salary in marks which, whentranslated, meant about L140 a year.
Sir James read it, and handed it back. "Well, what's the meaning ofthat?"
"I'm giving up the Foreign Office," said Bobbie, an engaging openness ofmanner. "It's not a proper place for a young man. I've learned nothingthere but a game we do with Blue-Books, and things you throw at theceiling--where they stick--I'll tell you about it presently. Besides,you see, I must have some money, and it don't grow in the Foreign Officefor people like me. So I went to my uncle, Lord Forestier--"
"Of course!" growled Sir James. "I thought we should come to the unclesbefore long. Miss Wilson, I desire to warn you against marrying a youngman of 'the classes.' They have no morals, but they have always uncles."
Miss Wilson's eyes shot laughter at her _fiance_. "Go on, Bobbie, anddon't make it too long!"
"I decline to be hustled." Bobbie's tone was firm, though urbane. "Irepeat: I went to my uncle. And I said to him, like the unemployed:'Find me work, and none of your d----d charity!'"
"Which means, I suppose, that the last time you went to him, youborrowed fifty pounds?" said Sir James.
"I shouldn't dream, sir, of betraying my uncle's affairs. On thisoccasion--for an uncle--he behaved well. He lectured me for twenty-sevenminutes and a half--I had made up my mind beforehand not to let it goover the half-hour--and then he came to business. After a year'straining and probation in Berlin he thought he could get me a post inhis brother-in-law's place in the City. Awfully warm thing, you know,"said Bobbie, complacently; "worth a little trouble. So I told him,kindly, I'd think of it. Ecco!" He pointed to the letter. "Of course, Itold my uncle I should permit him to continue my allowance, and in ayear I shall be a merchant prince--in the egg; I shall be worthmarrying; and I shall allow Ettie two hundred a year for her clothes."
"And Lady Niton?"
Bobbie sat down abruptly; the girl stared at the carpet.
"I don't see the point of your remark," said Bobbie at last, withmildness. "When last I had the honor of hearing of her, Lady Niton wastaking the air--or the waters--at Strathpeffer."
"As far as I know," remarked Sir James, "she is staying with theFeltons, five miles off, at this moment."
Bobbie whistled. "Close quarters!" He looked at Miss Ettie Wilson, andshe at him. "May I ask whether, as soon as Ettie and I invited ourselvesfor the day, you asked Lady Niton to come to tea?"
"Not at all. I never play Providence unless I'm told to do so. Only MissMallory is coming to tea."
Bobbie expressed pleasure at the prospect; then his amiablecountenance--the face of an "Idle Apprentice," whom no god has the heartto punish--sobered to a real concern as the association of ideas led himto inquire what the latest news might be of Oliver Marsham.
Sir James shook his head; his look clouded. He understood from Lady Lucythat Oliver was no better; the accounts, in fact, were very bad.
"Did they arrest anybody?" asked Bobbie.
"At Hartingfield? Yes--two lads. But there was not evidence enough toconvict. They were both released, and the village gave them an ovation."
Bobbie hesitated.
"What do you think was the truth about that article?"
Sir James frowned and rose.
"Miss Wilson, come and see my garden. If you don't fall down and worshipthe peaches on my south wall, I shall not pursue your acquaintance."
It was a Saturday afternoon. Briefs were forgotten. The three strolleddown the garden. Sir James, in a disreputable shooting-coat and cap, hishands deep in his pockets, took the middle of the path--the two loverson either side. Chide made himself delightful to them. On that Italianjourney of which he constantly thought, Ferrier had been amused andcheered all through by Bobbie's nonsense; and the young fellow hadloyally felt his death--and shown it. Chide's friendly eye would be onhim and his Ettie henceforward.
* * * * *
Five or ten minutes afterward, a brougham drove up to the door ofLytchett, and a small lady emerged. She had rung the bell, and waswaiting on the steps, when a pony-carriage also turned into the Lytchettavenue and drew near rapidly.
A girl in a shady hat was driving it.
"The very creature!" cried Lady Niton, under her breath, smartly tappingher tiny boot with the black cane she carried, and referring apparentlyto some train of meditation in which she had been just engaged. Shewaved to her own coachman to be off, and stood awaiting Diana.
"SIR JAMES MADE HIMSELF DELIGHTFUL TO THEM"]
"How do you do, Miss Mallory? Are you invited? I'm not."
Diana descended, and they shook hands. They had not met since theevening at Tallyn when Diana, in her fresh beauty, had been the gleamingprincess, and Lady Niton the friendly godmother, of so promising a fairytale. The old woman looked at her curiously, as they stood in thedrawing-room together, while the footman went off to find Sir James.Frail--dark lines under the eyes--a look as of long endurance--a smilethat was a mere shield and concealment for the heart beneath--alack!
And there was no comfort to be got out of calling down fire from heavenon the author of this change, since it had fallen so abundantly already!
"Sit down; you look tired," said the old lady, in her piping, peremptoryvoice. "Have you been here all the summer?"
"Yes--since June."
"Through the election?"
"Yes." Diana turned her face away. Lady Niton could see the extremedelicacy to which the profile had fined down, the bluish or purpleshadows here and there on the white skin. Something glittered in the oldwoman's eyes. She put out a hand from the queer flounced mantle, madeout of an ancient evening dress, in which she was arrayed, andtouched Diana's.
"You know--you've heard--about those poor things at Tallyn?"
Diana made a quick movement. Her eyes were on the speaker.
"How is Mr. Marsham?"
Lady Niton shook her head. She opened a hand-bag on her wrist, took outa letter, and put on her eye-glasses.
"This is Lucy--arrived this morning. It don't sound well. 'Come when youcan, my dear Elizabeth--you will be very welcome. But I do not know howI have the courage to ask you. We are a depressing pair, Oliver and I.Oliver has been in almost constant pain this last week. If it goes on wemust try morphia. But before that we shall see another doctor. I dreadto think of morphia. Once begin it, and what will be the end? I sit herealone a great deal--thinking. How long did that stone take to throw?--afew seconds, perhaps? And here is my son--my poor son!--broken andhelpless--perhaps for life.
We have been trying a secretary to write forhim and read to him, for the blindness increases, but it has not been asuccess.'"
Diana rose abruptly and walked to the window, where she stood,motionless--looking out--her back turned to Lady Niton. Her companionglanced at her--lifted her eyebrows--hesitated--and finally put theletter back into her pocket. There was an awkward silence, when Dianasuddenly returned to Lady Niton's side.
"Where is Miss Drake?" she said, sharply. "Is the marriage put off?"
"Marriage!" Lady Niton laughed. "Alicia and Oliver? H'm. I don't thinkwe shall hear much more of that!"
"I thought it was settled."
"Well, as soon as I heard of the accident and Oliver's condition, Iwondered to myself how long that young woman would keep it up. I have nodoubt the situation gave her a disturbed night or two, Alicia never canhave had: the smallest intention of spending her life, or the bestyears of it, in nursing a sick husband. On the other hand, money ismoney. So she went off to the Treshams', to see if there was no thirdcourse--that's how I read it."
"The Treshams'?--a visit?--since the accident?"
"Don't look so astonished, my dear. You don't know the Alicias of thisworld. But I admit we should be dull without them. There's a girl at theFeltons' who has just come down from the Treshams', and I wouldn't havemissed her stories of Alicia for a great deal. She's been setting hercap, it appears, at Lord Philip. However" (Lady Niton chuckled) "_there_she's met her match."
"Rut they _are_ engaged?" said Diana, in bewildered interrogation.
The little lady's laugh rang out--shrill and cracked--like the crow of abantam.
"She and Lord Philip? Trust Lord Philip!"
"No, I didn't mean that!"
"She and Oliver? I've no doubt Oliver thinks--or thought--they were.What view he takes now, poor fellow, I'm sure I don't know. But I don'tsomehow think Alicia will be able to carry on the game indefinitely.Lady Lucy is losing patience."
Diana sat in silence. Lady Niton could not exactly decipher her. But sheguessed at a conflict between a scrupulous or proud unwillingness todiscuss the matter at all or hear it discussed, and some motive deeperstill and more imperative.
"Lady Lucy has been ill too?" Diana inquired at last, in the same voiceof constraint.
"Oh, very unwell indeed. A poor, broken thing! And there don't seem tobe anybody to look after them. Mrs. Fotheringham is about as much goodas a broomstick. Every family ought to keep a supply of superfluousgirls. They're like the army--useless in peace and indispensable in war.Ha! here's Sir James."
Both ladies perceived Sir James, coming briskly up the garden path. Asshe saw him a thought struck Diana--a thought which concerned LadyNiton. It broke down the tension of her look, and there was the gleam ofa smile--sad still, and touching--in the glance she threw at hercompanion. She had been asked to tea to meet a couple of guests fromLondon with whose affairs she was well acquainted; and she too thoughtSir James had been playing Providence.
Sir James, evidently conscious, saw the raillery in her face, pinchedher fingers as she gave him her hand, and Diana, passing him, escaped tothe garden, very certain that she should find the couple in questionsomewhere among its shades.
Lady Niton examined Sir James--looked after Diana.
"Look here!" she said, abruptly; "what's up? You two understandsomething I don't. Out with it!"
Sir James, who could always blush like a girl, blushed.
"I vow that I am as innocent as a babe unborn!"
"What of?" The tone of the demand was like that of a sword in thedrawing.
"I have some guests here to-day."
"Who are they?"
"A young man you know--a young woman you would like to know."
Silence. Lady Niton sat down again.
"Kindly ring the bell," she said, lifting a peremptory hand, "and sendfor my carriage."
"Let me parley an instant," said Sir James, moving between her and thebell. "Bobbie is just off to Berlin. Won't you say good-bye to him?"
"Mr. Forbes's movements are entirely indifferent to me--ring!" Then,shrill-voiced--and with sudden fury, like a bird ruffling up: "Berlin,indeed! More waste--more shirking! He needn't come to me! I won't givehim another penny."
"I don't advise you to offer it," said Sir James, with suavity. "Bobbiehas got a post in Berlin through his uncle, and is going off for atwelvemonth to learn banking."
Lady Niton sat blinking and speechless. Sir James drew the muslincurtain back from the window.
"There they are, you see--Bobbie--and the Explanation. And if you askme, I think the Explanation explains."
Lady Niton put up her gold-rimmed glasses.
"She is not in the least pretty!" she said, with hasty venom, her oldhand shaking.
"No, but fetching--and a good girl. She worships her Bobbie, and she'ssending him away for a year."
"I won't allow it!" cried Lady Niton. "He sha'n't go."
Sir James shrugged his shoulders.
"These are domestic brawls--I decline them. Ah!" He turned to thewindow, opening it wide. She did not move. He made a sign, and two ofthe three persons who had just appeared on the lawn came running towardthe house. Diana loitered behind.
Lady Niton looked at the two young faces as they reached her side--themingling of laughter and anxiety in the girl's, of pride andembarrassment in Bobbie's.
"You sha'n't go to Berlin!" she said to him, vehemently, as she justallowed him to take her hand.
"Dear Lady Niton!--I must."
"You sha'n't!--I tell you! I've got you a place in London--a, thousandtimes, better than your fool of an uncle could ever get you. Uncle,indeed! Read that letter!" She tossed him one from her bag.
Bobbie read, while Lady Niton stared hard at the girl. Presently Bobbiebegan to gasp.
"Well, upon my word!"--he put the letter down--"upon my word!"' Heturned to his sweetheart. "Ettie!--you marry me in a month!--mind that!Hang Berlin! I scorn their mean proposals. London requires me." He drewhimself up. "But first" (he looked at Lady Niton, his flushed facetwitching a little) "justice!" he said, peremptorily--"justice on thechief offender."
And walking across to her, he stooped and kissed her. Then he beckonedto Ettie to do the same. Very shyly the girl ventured; very stoicallythe victim, submitted. Whereupon, Bobbie subsided, sitting cross-leggedon the floor, and a violent quarrel began immediately between him andLady Niton on the subject of the part of London in which he and Ettiewere to live. Fiercely the conflict waxed and waned, while the younggirl's soft irrepressible laughter filled up all the gaps and like arushing stream carried away the detritus--the tempers and rancors andscorns--left by former convulsions.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Diana and Sir James paced the garden. He saw that she wassilent and absent-minded, and guessed uneasily at the cause. It wasimpossible that any woman of her type, who had gone through theexperience that she had, should remain unmoved by the accounts nowcurrent as to Oliver Marsham's state.
As they returned across the lawn to the house the two lovers came out tomeet them. Sir James saw the look with which Diana watched them coming.It seemed to him one of the sweetest and one of the most piteous he hadever seen on a human face.
"I shall descend upon you next week," said Lady Niton abruptly, as Dianamade her farewells. "I shall be at Tallyn."
Diana did not reply. The little _fiancee_ insisted on the right to takeher to her pony-carriage, and kissed her tenderly before she let her go.Diana had already become as a sister to her and Bobbie, trusted in theirsecrets and advising in their affairs.
Lady Niton, standing by Sir James, looked after her.
"Well, there's only one thing in the world that girl wants; and Isuppose nobody in their senses ought to help her to it."
"What do you mean?"
She murmured a few words in his ear.
"Not a bit of it!" said Sir James, violently. "I forbid it. Don't you goand put anything of the sort into her head. The young man I mean
her tomarry comes back from Nigeria this very day."
"She won't marry him!"
"We shall see."
* * * * *
Diana drove home through lanes suffused with sunset and rich withautumn. There had been much rain through September, and the delugedearth steamed under the return of the sun. Mists were rising from thestubbles, and wrapping the woods in sleep and purple. To her the beautyof it all was of a mask or pageant--seen from a distance across a plainor through a street-opening--lovely and remote. All that was real--allthat lived--was the image within the mind; not the greatearth-show without.
As she passed through the village she fell in with the Roughsedges: thedoctor, with his wide-awake on the back of his head, a book and abulging umbrella under his arm; Mrs. Roughsedge, in a new shawl, and newbonnet-strings, with a prodigal flutter of side curls beside her amplecountenance. Hugh, it appeared, was expected by an evening train. Dianabegged that he might be brought up to see her some time in the course ofthe following afternoon. Then she drove on, and Mrs. Roughsedge was leftstaring discontentedly at her husband.
"I think she _was_ glad, Henry?"
"Think it, my dear, if it does you any good," said the doctor,cheerfully.
* * * * *
When Diana reached home night had fallen--a moon-lit night, throughwhich all the shapes and even the colors of day were still to be seen ordivined in a softened and pearly mystery. Muriel Colwood was not athome. She had gone to town, on one of her rare absences, to meet somerelations. Diana missed her, and yet was conscious that even the watchof those kind eyes would--to-night--have added to the passionate tormentof thought.
As she sat alone in the drawing-room after her short and solitary mealher nature bent and trembled under the blowing of those winds of fate,which, like gusts among autumn trees, have tested or strained ordespoiled the frail single life since time began; winds of love andpity, of desire and memory, of anguish and of longing.
Only her dog kept her company. Sometimes she rose out of restlessness,and moved about the room, and the dog's eyes would follow her, dumblydependent. The room was dimly lit; in the mirrors she saw now and thenthe ghostly passage of some one who seemed herself and not herself. Thewindows were open to a misty garden, waiting for moonrise; in the houseall was silence; only from the distant road and village came voicessometimes of children, or the sounds of a barrel-organ, fragmentaryand shrill.
Loneliness ached in her heart--spoke to her from the future. And fivemiles away Oliver, too, was lonely--and in pain. _Pain_!--the thought ofit, as of something embodied and devilish, clutching and tearing at aman already crushed and helpless--gave her no respite. The tears randown her cheeks as she moved to and fro, her hands at her breast.
Yet she was helpless. What could she do? Even if he were free fromAlicia, even if he wished to recall her, how could he--maimed andbroken--take the steps that could alone bring her to his side? If theirengagement had subsisted, horror, catastrophe, the approach of deathitself, could have done nothing to part them. Now, how was a man in sucha plight to ask from a woman what yet the woman would pay a universe togive? And in the face of the man's silence, how could the woman speak?
No!--she began to see her life as the Vicar saw it: pledged to largecauses, given to drudgeries--necessary, perhaps noble, for which thehappy are not meant. This quiet shelter of Beechcote could not be hersmuch longer. If she was not to go to Oliver, impossible that she couldlive on in this rose-scented stillness of the old house and garden,surrounded by comfort, tranquillity, beauty, while the agony of theworld rang in her ears--wild voices!--speaking universal, terrible,representative things, yet in tones piteously dear and familiar, close,close to her heart. No; like Marion Vincent, she must take her life inher hands, offering it day by day to this hungry human need, notstopping to think, accepting the first task to her hand, doing it as shebest could. Only so could she still her own misery; tame, silence herown grief; grief first and above all for Oliver, grief for her ownyouth, grief for her parents. She must turn to the poor in that mood shehad in the first instance refused to allow the growth of in herself--themood of one seeking an opiate, an anaesthetic. The scrubbing of hospitalfloors; the pacing of dreary streets on mechanical errands; the humblestobedience and routine; things that must be done, and in the doing ofthem deaden thought--these were what she turned to as the only means bywhich life could be lived.
Oliver!--No hope for him?--at thirty-six! His career broken--hisambition defeated. Nothing before him but the decline of power and joy;nights of barren endurance, separating days empty and tortured; allnatural pleasures deadened and destroyed; the dying down of all thehopes and energies that make a man.
She threw herself down beside the open window, burying her face on herknees. Would they never let her go to him?--never let her say to him:"Oliver, take me!--you did love me once--what matters what came betweenus? That was in another world. Take my life--crush out of it any drop ofcomfort or of ease it can give you! Cruel, cruel--to refuse! It is mineto give and yours to spend!"
Juliet Sparling's daughter. There was the great consecrating,liberating fact! What claim had she to the ordinary human joys? Whatcould the ordinary standards and expectations of life demand from her?Nothing!--nothing that could stem this rush of the heart to thebeloved--the forsaken and suffering and overshadowed beloved. Herfuture?--she held it dross--apart from Oliver. Dear Sir James!--but hemust learn to bear it--to admit that she stood alone, and must judge forherself. What possible bliss or reward could there ever be for her butjust this: to be allowed to watch and suffer with Oliver--to bring himthe invention, the patience, the healing divination of love? And if itwere not to be hers, then what remained was to go down into the arena,where all that is ugliest and most piteous in life bleeds and gasps, andthrow herself blindly into the fight. Perhaps some heavenly voice mightstill speak through it; perhaps, beyond its jar, some ineffable reunionmight dawn--
"First a peace out of pain--then a light--then thy breast!..."
She trembled through and through. Restraining herself, she rose, andwent to her locked desk, taking from it the closely written journal ofher father's life, which had now been for months the companion of herthoughts, and of the many lonely moments in her days and nights. Sheopened on a passage tragically familiar to her:
"It is an April day. Everything is very still and balmy. clouds are low, yet suffused with sun. They seem to be tangled among the olives, and all the spring green and flowering fruit trees are like embroidery on a dim yet shining background of haze, silvery and glistening in the sun, blue and purple in the shadows. The beach-trees in the olive garden throw up their pink spray among the shimmering gray leaf and beside the gray stone walls. Warm breaths steal to me over the grass and through the trees; the last brought with it a strong scent of narcissus. A goat tethered to a young tree in the orchard has reared its front feet against the stem, and is nibbling at the branches. His white back shines amid the light spring shade.
"Far down through the trees I can see the sparkle of the waves--beyond, the broad plain of blue; and on the headland, a mile away, white foam is dashing.
"It is the typical landscape of the South, and of spring, the landscape, with only differences in detail, of Theocritus or Vergil, or the Greek anthologists, those most delicate singers of nature and the South. From the beginning it has filled man with the same joy, the same yearning, the same despair.
"In youth and happiness we _are_ the spring--the young green--the blossom--the plashing waves. Their life is ours and one with ours.
"But in age and grief? There is no resentment, I think; no anger, as though a mourner resented the gayety around him; but, rather, a deep and melancholy wonder at the chasm that has now revealed itself between our life and nature. What does the breach mean?--the incurable dissonance and alienation? Are we gre
ater than nature, or less? Is the opposition final, the prophecy of man's ultimate and hopeless defeat at the hands of nature?--or is it, in the Hegelian sense, the mere development of a necessary conflict, leading to a profounder and intenser unity? The old, old questions--stock possessions of the race, yet burned anew by life into the blood and brain of the individual.
"I see Diana in the garden with her nurse. She has been running to and fro, playing with the dog, feeding the goat. Now I see her sitting still, her chin on her hands, looking out to sea. She seems to droop; but I am sure she is not tired. It is an attitude not very natural to a child, especially to a child so full of physical health and vigor; yet she often falls into it.
"When I see it I am filled with dread. She knows nothing, yet the cloud seems to be upon her. Does she already ask herself questions--about her father--about this solitary life?
"Juliet was not herself--not in her full sane mind--when I promised her. That I know. But I could no more have refused the promise than water to her dying lips. One awful evening of fever and hallucination I had been sitting by her for a long time. Her thoughts, poor sufferer, had been full of _blood_--it is hard to write it--but there is the truth--a physical horror of blood--the blood in which her dress--the dress they took from her, her first night in prison--was once steeped. She saw it everywhere, on her hands, the sheets, the walls; it was a nausea, an agony of brain and flesh; and yet it was, of course, but a mere symbol and shadow of the manifold agony she had gone through. I will not attempt to describe what I felt--what the man who knows that his neglect and selfishness drove her the first steps along this infernal road must feel to his last hour.--But at last we were able--the nurse and I--to soothe her a little. The nightmare lifted, we gave her food, and the nurse brushed her poor brown hair, and tied round it, loosely, the little black scarf she likes to wear. We lifted her on her pillows, and her white face grew calm, and so lovely--though, as we thought, very near to death. Her hair, which was cut in prison, had grown again a little--to her neck, and could not help curling. It made her look a child again--poor, piteous child!--so did the little scarf, tied under her chin--and the tiny proportions to which all her frame had shrunk.
"She lifted her face to mine, as I bent over her, kissed me, and asked for you. You were brought, and I took you on my knee, showing you pictures, to keep you quiet. But every other minute, almost, your eyes looked away from the book to her, with that grave considering look, as though a question were behind the look, to which your little brain could not yet give shape. My strange impression was that the question was there--in the mind--fully formed, like the Platonic 'ideas' in heaven; but that, physically, there was no power to make the word-copy that could have alone communicated it to us. Your mother looked at you in return, intently--quite still. When you began to get restless, I lifted you up to kiss her; you were startled, perhaps, by the cold of her face, and struggled away. A little color came into her cheeks; she followed you hungrily with her eyes as you were carried off; then she signed to me, and it was my hand that brushed away her tears.
"Immediately afterward she began to speak, with wonderful will and self-control, and she asked me that till you were grown up and knowledge became inevitable, I should tell you nothing. There was to be no talk of her, no picture of her, no letters. As far as possible, during your childhood and youth, she was to be to you as though she had never existed. What her thought was exactly she was too feeble to explain; nor was her mind strong enough to envisage all the consequences--to me, as well as to you--of what she proposed. No doubt it tortured her to think of you as growing up under the cloud of her name and fate, and with her natural and tragic impetuosity she asked what she did.
"'One day--there will come some one--who will love her--in spite of me. Then you and he--shall tell her.'
"I pointed out to her that such a course would mean that I must change my name and live abroad. Her eyes assented, with a look of relief. She knew that I had already developed the tastes of the nomad and the sun-worshipper, that I was a student, happy in books and solitude; and I have no doubt that the picture her mind formed at the moment of some such hidden life together, as we have actually led, you and I, since her death, soothed and consoled her. With her intense and poetic imagination, she knew well what had happened to us, as well as to herself.
"So here we are in this hermitage; and except in a few passing perfunctory words, I have never spoken to you of her. Whether what I have done is wise I cannot tell. I could not help it; and if I had broken my word, remorse would have killed me. I shall not die, however, without telling you--if only I have warning enough.
"But supposing there is no warning--then all that I write now, and much else, will be in your hands some day. There are moments when I feel a rush of comfort at the notion that I may never have to watch your face as you hear the story; there are others when the longing to hold you--child as you still are--against my heart, and feel your tears--your tears for her--mingling with mine, almost sweeps me off my feet.
"And when you grow older my task in all its aspects will be harder still. You have inherited her beauty on a larger, ampler scale, and the time will come for lovers. You will hear of your mother then for the first time; my mind trembles even now at the thought of it. For the story may work out ill, or well, in a hundred different ways; and what we did in love may one day be seen as an error and folly, avenging itself not on us, but on our child.
"Nevertheless, my Diana, if it had to be done again, it must still be done. Your mother, before she died, was tortured by no common pains of body and spirit. Yet she never thought of herself--she was tormented for us. If her vision was clouded, her prayer unwise--in that hour, no argument, no resistance was possible.
"The man who loves you will love you well, my child. You are not made to be lightly or faithlessly loved. He will carry you through the passage perilous if I am no longer there to help. To him--in the distant years--I commit you. On him be my blessing, and the blessing, too, of that poor ghost whose hands I seem to hold in mine as I write. Let him not be too proud to take it!"
Diana put down the book with a low sob that sounded through the quietroom. Then she opened the garden door and stepped on to the terrace. Thenight was cold but not frosty; there was a waning moon above theautumnal fulness of the garden and the woods.
A "spirit in her feet" impelled her. She went back to the house, found acloak and hat, put out the lamps, and sent the servants to bed. Thennoiselessly she once more undid the drawing-room door, and stole outinto the garden and across the lawn. Soon she was in the lime-walk, thefirst yellow leaves crackling beneath her feet; then in the kitchengarden, where the apples shone dimly on the laden boughs, wheresunflowers and dahlias and marigolds, tall white daisies and lateroses--the ghosts of their daylight selves--dreamed and drooped underthe moon; where the bees slept and only great moths were abroad. And soon to the climbing path and the hollows of the down. She walked quicklyalong the edge of it, through hanging woods of beech that clothed thehill-side. Sometimes the trees met in majestic darkness above her head,and the path was a glimmering mystery before her. Sometimes the groundbroke away on her left--abruptly--in great chasms, torn from thehill-side, stripped of trees, and open to the stars. Down rushed thesteep slopes to the plain, clad in the decaying leaf and mast of formeryears, and at the edges of these precipitous glades, or scattered atlong intervals across them, great single trees emerged, the types andmasters of the forest, their trunks, incomparably tall, and all theirnoble limbs, now thinly veiled by a departing leafage, drawn sharp, inblack and silver, on the
pale background of the chalk plain. Nothing sograndiose as these climbing beech woods of middle England!--by day, asit were, some vast procession marching joyously over hill and dale tothe music of the birds and the wind; and at night, a brooding host,silent yet animate, waiting the signal of the dawn.
Diana passed through them, drinking in the exaltation of their silenceand their strength, yet driven on by the mere weakness and foolishnessof love. By following the curve of the down she could reach a point onthe hill-side whence, on a rising ground to the north, Tallyn wasvisible. She hastened thither through the night. Once she was startledby a shot fired from a plantation near the path, trees began to rustleand dogs to bark, and she fled on, in terror lest the Tallyn keepersmight discover her. Alack!--for whose pleasure were they watching now?
The trees fell back. She reached the bare shoulder of the down.Northward and eastward spread the plain; and on the low hill in fronther eyes discerned the pale patch of Tallyn, flanked by the darkness ofthe woods. And in that dim front, a light--surely a light?--in an upperwindow. She sank down in a hollow of the chalk, her eyes upon the house,murmuring and weeping.
So she watched with Oliver, as once--at the moment of her sharpestpain--he had watched with her. But whereas in that earlier nighteverything was in the man's hands to will or to do, the woman feltherself now helpless and impotent. His wealth, his mother hedged himfrom her. And if not, he had forgotten her altogether for Alicia; hecared for her no more; it would merely add to his burden to be remindedof her. As to Alicia--the girl who could cruelly leave him there, inthat house of torture, to go and dance and amuse herself--leave him inhis pain, his mother in her sorrow--Diana's whole being was shakenfirst with an anguish of resentful scorn, in which everything personalto herself disappeared. Then--by an immediate revulsion--the thought ofAlicia was a thought of deliverance. Gone?--gone from between them?--theflaunting, triumphant, heartless face?
Suddenly it seemed to Diana that she was there beside him, in thedarkened room--that he heard her, and looked up.
"Diana!"
"Oliver!" She knelt beside him--she raised his head on her breast--shewhispered to him; and at last he slept. Then hostile forms crowded abouther, forbidding her, driving her away--even Sir James Chide--inthe name of her own youth. And she heard her own answer: "Dearfriend!--think!--remember! Let me stay!--let me stay! Am I not the childof sorrow? Here is my natural place--my only joy."
And she broke down into bitter helpless tears, pleading, it seemed, withthings and persons inexorable.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, in Beechcote village, that night, a man slept lightly,thinking of Diana. Hugh Roughsedge, bronzed and full of honors, a mandeveloped and matured, with the future in his hands, had returned thatafternoon to his old home.
The Testing of Diana Mallory Page 22