There are certain people who take a bland and solemn pleasure in the
details of death and disaster,--who are glad to assume an air of
what they call “Christian resignation,” and who delight in funerals
and black-edged note-paper. Regular church-goers are very frequently
most particular about this last outward sign and token of the heart’s
incurable sorrow; some choose a narrow black edge as being less
obtrusive but more subtle,--others a broad, as emblematic of utter
hopelessness. The present writer once happened on a cynical stationer,
who had his own fixed ideas on this particular department of mourning
which was so closely connected with his trade.
“The broader the edge, the less the grief,” he assured me. “Just as I
say of widows, the longer the veil, the sooner the second wedding,--and
the more wreaths there are on a hearse, the fewer the friends of the
deceased. That’s my experience.”
But no one should accept these remarks as anything but the cynical
view of a small tradesman whose opinion of his clients was somewhat
embittered.
A letter with a black border which was neither broad nor narrow,
but discreetly medium, appeared among Sophy Lansing’s daily pile of
correspondence the morning after Diana’s arrival at her flat, and,
recognising the handwriting on the envelope, she at once selected
it from the rest, and ran into her friend’s room, waving it aloft
triumphantly.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “From your poor, afflicted Pa! To announce the
sad news!”
Diana, fresh from her bath, her hair hanging about her and the faint
pink of her cheeks contrasting becomingly with the pale blue of her
dressing-gown, looked up rather wistfully.
“Do open it!” she said. “I’m sure it will be a beautiful letter! Pa
can express himself quite eloquently when he thinks it worth while. I
remember he wrote a most charming ‘gush’ of sympathy to a woman who had
lost her husband suddenly,--she was a titled person, and Pa worships
titles,--and when he had posted it he said: ‘Thank God that’s done
with! It’s bad enough to write a letter of condolence at all, but when
you have to express sorrow for the death of an old fool who is better
out of the world than in it, it’s a positive curse!’”
She laughed, adding: “I know he isn’t really sorry for _my_ supposed
‘death’; if the real, bare, brutal truth were told, he’s glad!”
Sophy Lansing paused in the act of opening the letter.
“Diana!” she exclaimed in a tone of thrilling indignation. “If he’s
such an old brute as that----”
“Oh, no, he isn’t really an old brute!” Diana averred, gently. “He’s
just a very ordinary sort of man. Lots of people pretend to be sorry
for the deaths of their friends and relatives when they’re not; and
half the mourning in the world is sheer hypocrisy! Pa’s a bit of a
coward, too--he hates the very thought of death, and when some person
he has known commits this last indiscretion of dying, he forgets it as
quickly as possible. I don’t blame him, I’m sure. Everyone can’t feel
deeply--some people can’t feel at all.”
Here Sophy opened the letter and glanced at it. Presently she looked up.
“Shall I read it to you?” she asked.
Diana nodded. With a small, preparatory cough, which sounded rather
like a suppressed giggle, Sophy thereupon read the following effusion:
“Dear Miss Lansing,
“I hardly know how to break to you the news of the sudden and awful
tragedy which has wrecked the happiness of our lives! Our beloved only
child, our darling daughter Diana is no more! I am aware what a shock
this will be to your feelings, for you loved her as a friend, and I
wish any words of mine could soften the blow. But I am too stunned
myself with grief and horror to write more than just suffices to tell
you of the fatal calamity. The poor child was overtaken by a high
tide while bathing this morning, and was evidently carried out of
her depth. For some hours I have waited and hoped against hope that
perhaps, as she was a good swimmer, she might have reached some other
part of the shore, but alas! I hear from persons familiar with this
coast that the swirl of water in a high tide is so strong and often
so erratic that it is doubtful whether even her poor body will ever
be found! A sailor has just called here with a melancholy relic--her
poor little bathing shoes! He picked up one this morning, soon after
the accident, he says, and the other has lately been washed ashore.
I cannot go on writing,--my heart is too full! My poor wife is quite
beside herself with sorrow. We can only place our trust in God that He
will, with time, help us to find consolation for our irreparable loss.
We shall not forget your affection for our darling, and shall hope to
send you her little wristlet watch as a souvenir.
“Yours, in the deepest affliction,
“James Polydore May.”
Diana had listened with close and almost fascinated attention.
“Of course it isn’t true,” she said, when the reading was finished. “It
can’t be true.”
“What can’t be true?” queried Sophy, puckering her well-arched eyebrows.
“All that!” and Diana waved her hand expressively. “Pa’s not a bit
‘stunned with grief and horror!’ You couldn’t fancy him in such
a condition if you tried! And mother is not in the least ‘beside
herself.’ She’s probably ordering her mourning. Why, they are already
parcelling out my trinkets, and before I’ve been ‘drowned’ twenty-four
hours they’re thinking of sending you my wristlet watch by way of an
‘In Memoriam.’ I hope they will,--I should love you to have it! But
people who are ‘stunned with grief and horror’ and ‘beside themselves’
are not able to make all these little arrangements so quickly! Ah,
Sophy! An hour ago I was actually fancying that perhaps I had behaved
cruelly,--there was a stupid, lingering sentiment in my mind that
suggested the possible suffering and despair of my father and mother at
having lost me!--but after that letter I am reassured! I know I have
done the right thing.”
Sophy looked at her with a smile.
“You are a curious creature!” she said. “Surely Pa expresses himself
very touchingly?”
“Too touchingly by half!” answered Diana. “Had he really felt the grief
he professes to feel, he could not have written to you or to any other
friend for several days about it----”
“Perhaps,” interrupted Sophy, “he thought it would be in the papers,
and that unless he wrote it might be taken for someone else----”
“He _knew_ it would be in the papers,” said Diana, “and naturally
wished to let his acquaintances know that he, and no other man of
the name of May, is the bereaved father of the domestic melodrama.
Well!”--and she shook back her hair over her shoulders--“it’s
finished! I am dead!--and ‘born again,’ as the Scripture saith,--at
rather a mature age!--but I may yet turn out worth regenerating!--who
knows?”
She laughed, and turned to the dressing-table to complete her toilette.
Sophy put affectionate arms about her.
“You are a dear, strange, clever, lovable thing, anyway!” she said.
“But really, I’ve had quite a sleepless night thinking about that
Dr. Dimitrius! He may be a secret investigator or a spy, and if you
go to him he may want you to do all sorts of dreadful, even criminal
things!----”
“But I shouldn’t do them!” laughed Diana. “Sophy, have you _no_
confidence in my mental balance?”
“_I_ have, but some people wouldn’t,” Sophy replied. “They would
say that a woman of your age ought to know better than to leave a
comfortable home where you had only the housekeeping to do, and give
up the chance of an ample income at your parents’ death, just to go
away on a wild-goose chase after new adventures, and all because you
imagined you weren’t loved! Oh, dear! Love is only ‘a springe to catch
woodcocks!’ as the venerable Polonius so wisely remarks in _Hamlet_. I
know a sneering cynic who says that women are always ‘asking for love!’”
Diana paused in the act of brushing out a long bright ripple of hair.
Her eyes grew sombre--almost tragic.
“So they are!” she said. “They ask for it because they know God meant
them to have it! They know they were created for lover-love, wife-love,
mother-love,--just think what life means to them when cheated out
of all three through the selfishness and treachery of man! Their
blood gets poisoned--their thoughts share the bitterness of their
blood--they are no longer real women; they become abnormal and of no
sex,--they shriek with the Suffragettes, and put on trousers to go
‘on the land’ with the men--they do anything and everything to force
men’s attention--forgetting that efforts made on the masculine line
completely fail in attraction for the male sex. It is the sensual and
physical side of a woman that subjugates a man,--therefore when she is
past her youth she has little or no ‘chance,’ as they call it. If she
happens to be brainless, she turns into a sour, grizzling, tea-drinking
nonentity and talks nothing but scandal and diseases,--if she is
intellectually brilliant, well!--sometimes she ‘rounds’ on the dogs
that have bayed her into solitude, and, like a wounded animal, springs
to her revenge!”
The words came impetuously from her lips, uttered in that thrillingly
sweet voice which was her special gift and charm.
Sophy’s bright eyes opened in sheer astonishment.
“Why, Diana!” she exclaimed. “You talk like a tragedy queen!”
Diana shrugged her shoulders lightly.
“Do I?” and she slowly resumed the brushing of her hair. “There’s
nothing in what I say but the distinctly obvious. Love is the necessity
of life to a woman, and when that fails----”
“Diana, Diana!” interrupted Sophy, shaking a warning finger at
her--“you talk of love as if it really were the ‘ideal’ thing described
by poets and romancists, when it’s only the sugar-paper to attract
and kill the flies! We women begin life by believing in it; but every
married friend of mine tells me that all the ‘honey’ of the ‘moon’
is finished in a couple of months, never again to be found in the
_pot-au-feu_ of matrimony! Out of a thousand men taken at random
perhaps one will really _love_, in the best and finest sense; the rest
are only swayed by animal passion such as is felt by the wolf, the
bear, or even the rabbit!--I really think the rabbit is the most exact
prototype! How many wives one knows whose husbands not only neglect
them, but are downright rude to them!--Why, my dear, your notion of
‘love’ is a dream, beyond all realisation!”
“Possibly!” and Diana went on with her hair-brushing. “But whatever
it is, or whatever I imagined it to be, I don’t want it now. I
want--revenge!”
“Revenge?” Sophy gave a little start of surprise. “You? You, always
gentle, patient and adaptable! _You_ want ‘revenge’? On whom? On what?”
“On all and everything that has set me apart and alone as I am!” Diana
answered. “Perhaps science can show me a way to it! If so, I shall not
have lived in vain!”
“Diana!” exclaimed her friend. “One would think you were going to bring
microbes in a bottle, or something awful of that sort, and kill people!”
“Not I!” and Diana laughed quite merrily. “Killing is a common
thing--and vulgar. But--I have strange dreams!” She twisted up her
hair dexterously and coiled it prettily round her small, compact head.
“Yes!--I have strange dreams!” she went on. “In these times we are apt
to forget the conquests possible to the brain,--we let fools over-ride
us when we could far more easily over-ride _them_. In my ‘salad days,’
which lasted far too long, I ‘asked for love’--now I ask for vengeance!
I gave all my heart and soul to a man whose only god was Self,--and
I got nothing back for my faith and truth. So I have a long score to
settle!--and I shall try to have some of my spent joys returned to
me--with heavy interest!”
“But how?” inquired Sophy, perplexed. “You don’t expect to get any
‘spent joys’ out of this Dr. Dimitrius, do you?”
Diana smiled. “No!”
“And if he proves to be a charlatan, as he probably will, you say
you’ll go as companion or governess or housekeeper to somebody out in
Geneva--well, where are you going to find any joy in such a life as
that?”
Diana looked at her, still smiling.
“My dear, I don’t expect anything! Who was it that said: ‘Blessed are
they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed’? The
chief point I have now to dwell upon is, that I am to all intents and
purposes _Dead!_ and, being dead, I’m free!--almost as free as if my
spirit had really escaped from its mortal prison. Really, there’s
something quite vitalising in the situation!--just now I feel ready for
anything. I shouldn’t mind trying an airship voyage to the moon!”
“With Dr. Dimitrius?” suggested Sophy, laughing.
“Well, I don’t know anything about Dr. Dimitrius yet,” answered
Diana. “Judging from his advertisement I imagine he is some wealthy
‘crank’ who fancies himself a scientist. There are any amount of
them wandering about the world at the present time. I shall soon be
able to tell whether he’s a humbug or an honest man,--whether he’s
mad or sane--meanwhile, dear little Sophy, let’s have breakfast and
then go shopping. We’ve done with Pa and Ma--at any rate _I_ have,
bless their dear old hearts!--we know they’re ‘stunned with grief and
horror’ and ‘beside themselves’ and as happy in their ‘misery’ as they
ever were in their lives. I can see my mother getting fitted for her
mourning, and ‘Pa’ arguing with the hatter as to the proper width of
his hat-band, and all the neighbours calling, and proffering ‘sympathy’
when they don’t care a scrap! It’s a curious little humbug of a world,
Sophy!--but for the remainder of my time I’ll try to make it of use to
me. Only you’ll have to lend me some money to begin upon!”
“Any amount you want!” said Sophy, enthusiastically--“You must have
proper clothes to travel in!”
“I _must_,” agreed Diana, with humorously dramatic emphasis. “I haven’t
had any since I was ‘withdrawn’ from the matrimonial market for lack
of bidders. Mother used to spend hundreds on me so long as there was
any hope--I had the prettiest frocks, the daintiest hats,--and in these
I ‘radiated’ at all the various shows,--Ranelagh, Hurlingham, Henley,
Ascot, Goodwood,--how sick I used to be of it! But when these little
crowsfeet round my eyes began to come”--and she touched her temples
expressively--“then poor, disappointed Ma drew in the purse-strings.
She found that very ‘young’ hats didn’t suit me--delicate sky-pinks
and blues made me look sallow,--so she and Pa decided on giving me an
‘allowance’--too meagre to stand the cost of anything but the plainest
garments--and--so, here I am! Pa says ‘only very young people should
wear white’--but the vain old boy got himself up in white flannels the
other day to play tennis and thought he looked splendid! But what’s the
odds, so long as he’s happy!”
She laughed and turned to the mirror to complete her toilette, and
in less than an hour’s time she and Sophy Lansing had finished their
breakfast and were out together in Bond Street, exploring the mysteries
of the newest Aladdin’s palace of elegant garments, where the perfect
taste and deft fingers of practised Parisian fitters soon supplied all
that was needed to suit Diana’s immediate requirements. At one very
noted establishment, she slipped into a “model” gown of the finest
navy serge, of a design and cut so admirable that the _couturier_
could hardly be said to flatter when he declared that “Madame looked a
princess in it.”
“Do princesses always look well?” she asked, with a quaint little
uplifting of her eyebrows.
The great French tailor waved his hands expressively.
“Ah, Madame! It is a figure of speech!”
Diana laughed,--but she purchased the costume, Sophy whispering
mysteriously in her ear: “Let us take it with us in the automobile! One
never knows!--they might change it! And you’ll never get anything to
suit you more perfectly.”
Miss Lansing was worldly-wise; she had not gained the reputation
of being one of the best-dressed women in London without learning
many little ins and outs of “model” gowns which are hidden from the
profane. Many and many a time had she been “taken in,” on this deep
question,--many a “model” had she chosen, leaving it to be sent home,
and on receipt had found it to be only a clever “copy” which, on
being tried on, had proved a misfit. And well she knew that complaint
was useless, as the tailor or modiste who supplied the goods would
surely prove a veritable Ananias in swearing that she had received the
“model,” and the model only. On this occasion she had her way, and,
despite the deprecating appeal of the _couturier_ that he might be
allowed to send it, the becoming costume was packed and placed safely
in the automobile, and she and Diana drove off with it.
“You never _could_ look better in anything!” declared Sophy. “Promise
me you’ll wear it when you make your first call on Dr. Dimitrius!”
“But, my dear, it may be too much for him!” laughed Diana. “He wants ‘a
courageous and determined woman of mature years,’--and so charming a
Paris costume may not ‘dress’ the part!”
“Never mind whether it does or not,” said Sophy. “I can’t believe he
wants an old frump! You may not believe me, Di, but you look perfectly
fascinating in that gown--almost young again!”
Diana’s blue eyes clouded with a touch of sadness. She sighed a little.
“Almost!--not quite!” she answered. “But--‘dress does make a
difference!’--there’s no doubt of it! These last few years I’m not
ashamed to say I’ve longed for pretty clothes--I suppose it’s the dying
spirit of youth trying to take a last caper! And now, with all these
vanity purchases, I am horribly in your debt. Dear Sophy, how shall I
ever repay you?”
“Don’t know and don’t care!” said Sophy, recklessly. “I’m not a
grasping creditor. And something tells me you are going to be very
rich!--perhaps this man Dimitrius is a millionaire and wants a clever
woman for his wife--a sort of Madame Curie to help him with his
experiments----”
“Then I shall not suit him,” interrupted Diana, “for I never intend
to be wife to any man. First of all, I’m too old--secondly, if I were
young again, I wouldn’t. It isn’t worth while!”
“But didn’t you say you wanted to be loved?” queried Sophy.
“Does marriage always fulfil that need?” counter-queried Diana.
They exchanged glances--smiled--shrugged shoulders and dropped the
conversation.
Two days later Diana left England for Geneva.