E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Matthew Wheaton, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illuminations.
See 37974-h.htm or 37974-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/37974/pg37974-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37974/37974-h.zip)
Project Gutenberg also has Volumes I and II of this
work. See
Volume I: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37973
Volume III: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37975
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
http://www.archive.org/details/dianatempest02chol
DIANA TEMPEST.
by
MARY CHOLMONDELEY,
Author of
"The Danvers Jewels,"
"Sir Charles Danvers," etc.
In Three Volumes.
VOL. II.
London:
Richard Bentley & Son,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1893.
(All rights reserved.)
DIANA TEMPEST.
CHAPTER I.
"The fact is, I have never loved any one well enough to put
myself into a noose for them. It _is_ a noose, you
know."--GEORGE ELIOT.
It was the middle of July. The season had reached the climax which
precedes a collapse. The heat was intense. The pace had been too great
to last. The rich sane were already on their way to Scotch moor or
Norwegian river; the rich insane and the poor remained, and people with
daughters--assiduously entertaining the dwindling numbers of the
"uncertain, coy, and hard to please" _jeunesse doree_ of the present
day. There were some great weddings fixed for the end of July, proving
that marriage was not extinct,--prospective weddings which, like iron
rivets, held the crumbling fabric of the season together.
If the unusual heat had driven away half the world, still the greater
part of the little world mentioned in these pages remained. Not quite
all, for Sir Henry and Lady Verelst had departed rather suddenly for
Norway, and Lord Frederick was drinking the water at Homburg or Aix; and
thriving on a beverage which never passed his lips without admixture in
his own country, except in connection with the toothbrush.
But John and his aunt Miss Fane were still in the large cool house in
Park Lane. Lord Hemsworth was still baking himself for no apparent
reason in his rooms over his club. Mrs. Courtenay and Di were still in
town, because they could not afford to go until their country visits
began.
"Oh, granny," said Di one afternoon as they sat together in the darkened
drawing-room, "let us cut everything. Do be ill, and let me write round
to say we have been obliged to leave town."
Mrs. Courtenay shook her head.
"We can't go till we have somewhere to go to, and we are not due at
Archelot till the first of August."
"Could not we afford a week, just one week, at the sea first?"
"No, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I have thought it over. Only the rich
can have their cake and eat it. We had a victoria for a fortnight in
June. That meant no seaside this year."
There was a pause.
"I wish I were married," said Di, looking affectionately at Mrs.
Ccurtenay's pale face. "I wish I had a rich, kind husband. I would not
mind if he parted his hair down the middle, or even if he came down to
breakfast in slippers, if only he would give me everything I wanted. And
he should stay up in London, and we would run down to the seaside
together, G., first-class; I am not sure I should not take a _coupe_ for
you; and you should go out on the sands in the donkey-chairs that your
soul loves; and have ice on the butter and cream in the tea; and in the
evening we would sit on a first-floor balcony (no more second-floors if
I were rich) and watch a cool moon rising over a cool sea. I wish
moonlight on the sea were not so expensive. The beauties of nature are
very dear, granny. Sunsets cost money nowadays."
"Everything costs money," said Mrs. Courtenay.
Di was silent a little while; it was too hot to talk except at
intervals.
"I don't think I mind being poor," she said at last. "For myself, I
mean. I have looked at being poor in the face, and it is not half so bad
as rich people seem to think. I mean our kind of poorness; of course,
not the poverty of nothing a year and ten children to educate, who ought
never to have been born. But some people think that the kind of means
(like ours) which narrow down pleasures, and check one at every turn,
and want a sharp tug to meet at the end of the year, are a dreadful
misfortune. Really I don't see it. Of course it is annoying being less
well off than any of our friends, and now I come to think of it, all the
people we know are richer than ourselves. I wonder how it happens. But
there is something rather interesting after all in combating small
means. Look at that screen I made you last year, and think of the
gnawing envy it has awakened in the hearts of friends. It was a
clothes-horse once, but genius was brought to bear upon it, and it is a
very imposing object now. And then my dear Emersons, all eleven of them,
I don't think I could have valued them so much, or have been so furious
with Jane for spilling water on one of them, if they had not emerged one
by one out of my glove and shoe money."
"Oh, my dear, poverty does not matter, nothing matters while you are
young and strong. But it presses hard when one is growing old. Money
eases everything."
"I feel that; and sometimes when I see you working a sovereign out of
the neck of that horrid little woollen jug in the writing-table drawer,
I simply long for money for your sake, that you may never be worried
about it any more. And sometimes I should like it for the sake of all
the lovely places in the world that other people go to (people who only
remember the _table d'hote_ dinners when they come back), and the books
that I cannot afford, and the pictures that seem my very own, only they
belong to some one else; and the kind things one could do to poor people
who could not return them, which rich people don't seem to think of:
rich people's kindnesses are always so expensive. Yes, I long for money
sometimes, but all the time I know I don't really care about it. There
seems to be no pleasure in having anything if there is no difficulty in
getting it. I would rather marry a poor man with brains and do my best
with his small income, and help him up, than spend a rich man's money.
Any one can do that. I fear I shall never take you to the seaside, my
own G., or send you pre-paid hampers of hothouse flowers, or game, after
Mr. Di's _battues_, for I am certain Providence intends me to be a poor
man's wife, if I enter the holy estate at all, because--I should make
such a good one."
"You would make a good wife, Di, but I sometimes think you will never
marry," said Mrs. Courtenay, sadly. She felt the heat.
"Well, granny, I won't say I feel sure I shall never marry, because all
girls say that, and it generally means nothing. But still that is what I
feel without saying it. Do you remember poor old Aunt Belle when she was
dying, and how nothing pleased her, and how she said at last: 'I want--I
want--I don't know what I want'? Well, when I come to think of it, I
really don't know what _I_ want. I know what I _don't_ want. I don't
want a kind, indulgent husband, and a large income, and good horses, and
pretty little frilled children with their mother's eyes, that one shows
to people and is proud of. It is all very nice. I am glad when I see
other people happy like that. I should like to see you pleased; but for
myself--really--I think I should find them rather in the way. I dare say
I might make a good wife, as you say. I believe I could be rather a
cheerful companion, and affectionate if it was not exacted of me. But
somehow all that does not hit the mark. The men who have cared for me
have never seemed to like me for myself, or to understand the something
behind the chatter and the fun which is the real part of me--which, if I
married one of them, would never be brought into play, and would die of
starvation. The only kind of marriage I have ever had a chance of seems
to me like a sort of suicide--seems as if it would be one's best self
that would be killed, while the other self, the well-dressed,
society-loving, ball-going, easy-going self, would be all that was left
of me, and would dance upon my grave."
Mrs. Courtenay was silent. She never ridiculed any thought, however
crude and young, if it were genuine. She was one of the few people who
knew whether Di was in fun or in earnest, and she knew she was in
earnest now.
"There are such things as happy marriages," she said.
"Yes, granny; but I think it is the _happy_ marriages I see which make
me afraid of marrying. I know it is foolish to expect to meet with
anything better than the ordinary happy marriage, and one ought to be
thankful if one met with that, for half the world does not. But when I
see what is _called_ a happy marriage I always think, is that all?
Somebody who believes everything I do is right, however silly it is, and
knows how many lumps of sugar I take in my tea--like Arnold and
Lily--people point at that marriage as such a model, because they have
been married two years and are still as silly as they were. But whenever
I stay with them, and she talks nonsense, and he thinks it is all the
wisdom of Solomon; and she gives him a blotting-pad, and he gives her a
fan; and then they look at each other, and then run races in the garden,
and each waits for the other, and they come in hand-in-hand as if they
had done something clever--whenever I behold these things it all seems
to me a sort of game that I should be ashamed to play at, and I feel, if
that is all, at least all I ought to expect, that it is a kind of
happiness I don't care to have. Must love be always a sort of pretence,
granny, and such a blind, silly, unreasoning feeling when it does exist?
If ever I fall in love, shall I set up an assortment of lamentable,
ludicrous illusions about some commonplace young man, as Lily does
about that pink Arnold? Can't love be real, like hate? Can't people ever
look at each other, and see each other as they _are_, and love each
other for _what_ they are?"
"The Lilies and the Arnolds would not marry if they saw each other as
they are, my dear, and they would miss a great deal of happiness in
consequence. There would be very few marriages if there were no
illusions."
Di was silent.
Mrs. Courtenay stitched a resolution into her lace-work concerning a man
whom no one could call commonplace, and presently spoke again.
"You are confusing 'being in love' with love itself," she said. "The one
is common to vulgarity, the other rare, at least between men and women.
It is the best thing life has to offer. But I have noticed that those
who believe in it, and hope for it, and refuse the commoner love for it,
generally--remain unmarried. And now, my dear, send down Evans with my
black lace mantilla, and my new bonnet, for Mrs. Darcy said she would
lend us her carriage for the afternoon, and it comes at five. Put on a
white gown, and make yourself look cool. I must call on Miss Fane, and
afterwards we will go down and see the pony races at Hurlingham. Lord
Hemsworth sent us tickets for to-day. He is riding, I think."