"Ah, man's pride
Or woman's--which is greatest?"
E. B. BROWNING.
"Di," said Archie, sauntering up to her on the terrace at Cantalupe,
where she was sitting the morning after the ball, and planting himself
in front of her, as he had a habit of doing before all women, so as to
spare them the trouble of turning round to look at him, "I can't swallow
little Crupps."
"No one wants you to," said Di. "If you don't like her, you had better
leave her alone."
"Women are not meant to be let alone," said Archie, yawning, "except the
ugly ones."
"Well, Miss Crupps is not pretty."
"No, but she is gilt up to the eyes. Poor eyes, too, and light
eyelashes. I could not marry light eyelashes."
"I am glad to hear it."
"Oh! I know you don't care a straw whether I settle well or not. You
never have cared. Women are all alike. There's not a woman in the world,
or a man either, who cares a straw what becomes of me."
"Or you what becomes of them."
"John's just as bad as the rest," continued the victim of a worldly age.
"And John and I were great chums in old days. But it is the way of the
world."
Men who attract by a certain charm of manner which the character is
unable to bear out, who make unconscious promises to the _hope_ of
others without ability to keep them, are ever those who complain most
loudly of the fickleness of women, of the uncertainty of friendship, of
their loveless lot.
Di did not answer. Any allusion to John, even the bare mention of his
name, had become of moment to her. She never by any chance spoke of him,
neither did she ever miss a word that was said about him in her
presence; and often raged inwardly at the ruthless judgments and
superficial criticisms that were freely passed upon him by his
contemporaries, and especially his kinsfolk. From a very early date in
this world's history, ability has been felt to be distressing in its own
country, especially in the country. If a clever man would preserve
unflawed the amulet of humility, let him at intervals visit among his
country cousins. John had not many of these invaluable relations; but,
happily for him, he had contemporaries who did just as well--men who,
when he was mentioned with praise in their hearing, could always break
in that they had known him at Eton, and relate how he had over-eaten
himself at the sock-shop.
"One thing I am determined I won't do," continued Archie, "and that is
marry poverty, like the poor old governor. He has often talked about it,
and what a grind it was, with the tears in his eyes."
"What has turned your mind to marriage on this particular morning, of
all others?"
"I don't know, unless it is the vision of little Crupps. I suppose I
shall come to something of that kind some day. If it isn't her it will
be something like her. One must live. You are on the look out for money,
too, Di, so you need not be so disdainful. You can't marry a poor man."
"They don't often ask me," said Di. "I fancy I look more expensive to
keep up than I really am."
"Ah! here comes Lady Verelst," said Archie, patronizingly. "I'd marry
_her_, now, if she were a rich widow. I would indeed. She is putting up
her red parasol. Quite right. She has not your complexion, Di, nor mine
either."
Archie got up as Madeleine came towards them, and offered her his chair.
Archie had several cheap effects. To offer a chair with a glance and a
smile was one of them. Perhaps he could not help it if the glance
suggested unbounded homage, if the smile conveyed an admiration as
concentrated as Liebig's extract. His faithful, tender eyes could wear
the sweetest, the saddest, or the most reproachful expression to order.
Every slight passing feeling was magnified by the beauty of the face
that reflected it into a great emotion. He felt almost nothing, but he
appeared to feel a great deal. A man who possesses this talisman is very
dangerous.
Poor Madeleine, confident of her appearance in her new Cresser garment,
with its gold-flowered waistcoat, firmly believed, as Archie silently
pushed forward the chair, that she had inspired--had been so unfortunate
as to inspire--"une grande passion malheureuse." Almost all Archie's
lovemaking, and that is saying a good deal, was speechless. He could
look unutterable things, but he had not, as he himself expressed it,
"the gift of the gab."
Madeleine was sorry for him, but she could not allow him to remain
enraptured beside her in full view of Sir Henry's study windows.
"How delicious it is here!" she said, after dismissing him to the
billiard-room. "I never lie in bed after a ball, do you, Di? I seem to
crave for the sunshine and the face of nature after all the glitter and
the worldliness of a ball-room."
"I don't find ball-rooms more worldly than other places--than this
bench, for instance."
"Now, how strange that is of you, Di! This spot is quite sacred to _me_.
I come and read here."
Madeleine had, by degrees, sanctified all the seats in the garden; had
taken the impious chill even off the iron ones, by reading her little
manuals on each in turn.
"It was here," continued Madeleine, "that I persuaded dear Fred to go
into the Church. It was settled he was to be a clergyman ever since he
had that slight stroke as a boy; but when he went to college he must
have got into a bad set, for he said he did not think he had a vocation.
And mother--you know what mother is--did not like to press it, and the
whole thing was slipping through, when I had him to stay here, and
talked to him very seriously, and explained that a living in the family
_was_ the call."
"Madeleine," said Di, rising precipitately, "it is getting late. I must
fly and pack."
If she stayed another moment she knew she should inevitably say
something that would scandalize Madeleine.
"And I did not say it," she said with modest triumph that evening, as
she sat in her grandmother's room before going to bed; having rejoined
her at Garstone, a relation's house, whither Mrs. Courtenay had preceded
her. "I refrained even from bad words. Granny, you know everything: why
is it that the people who shock me so dreadfully, like Madeleine, are
just the very ones who are shocked at me? You are not. All the really
good earnest people I know are not. But _they_ are. What is the matter
with them?"
"Oh, my dear, what is the matter with all insincere people? It is only
one of the symptoms of an incurable disease."
"But the being shocked is genuine. They really feel it. There is
something wrong somewhere, but I don't know where it is."
"It is not hard to find, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, sadly; "and it is not
worth growing hot about. You are only running a little tilt against
religiosity. Most young persons do. But it is not worth powder and shot.
Keep your ammunition for a nobler enemy. There is plenty of sin in the
world. Strike at that whenever you can, but don't pop away at shadows."
"Ah! but, granny, these people do such harm. They bring such discredit
on religion. That is what enrages me."
"My dear, you are wrong; they bring discredit upon nothing but their own
lamentable caricatures of holy things. These people are solemn
warnings--danger-signals on the broad paths of religiosity, which,
remember, are very easy walking. There's no life so easy. The religious
life is hard enough, God knows. Providence put those people there to
make their creed hideous, and they do it. Upon my word, I think your
indignation against them is positively unpardonable."
Di was silent.
"You don't mind being disliked by these creatures, do you, Di?"
"Yes, granny, I think I do. I believe, if I only knew the truth about
myself, I want every one to like me; and it ruffles me because they make
round eyes, and don't like me when their superiors often do."
"Mere pride and love of admiration on your part, my dear. You have no
business with them. To be liked and admired by certain persons is a
stigma in itself. Look at the kind of mediocrity and feebleness they set
on pedestals, and be thankful you don't fit into their mutual admiration
societies. That 'like cleaves to like,' is a saying we seldom get to the
bottom of. These unfortunates find blots, faults, evil, in everything,
especially everything original, because they are sensitive to blots and
faults. They commit themselves out of their own mouths. 'Those that seek
shall find,' is especially true of the fault-finders. The truth and
beauty which others receptive of truth and beauty perceive, escape them.
Good nature sees good in others. The reverent impute reverence. This
false reverence finds irreverence, as a mean nature takes for granted a
low motive in its fellow. Oh dear me, Di! Have I expended on you for
years the wisdom of a Socrates and a Solomon, that at one and twenty you
should need to be taught your alphabet? Go to bed and pray for wisdom,
instead of complaining of the lack of it in others."
Di had had but little leisure lately, and the unbounded leisure of her
long visit at Garstone came as a relief.
"I shall have time to think here," she said to herself, as she looked
out the first morning over the grey park and lake distorted by the
little panes of old glass of her low window.
Two very old people lived at Garstone, who regarded their niece, Mrs.
Courtenay, as still quite a young person, in spite of her tall
granddaughter. Time seemed to have forgotten the dear old couple, and
they in turn had forgotten it. It never mattered what time of day it
was. Nothing depended on the hour. In the course of the morning the
butler would open both the folding doors at the end of the long
"parlour" leading to the chapel, and would announce, "Prayers are
served." Long prayers they were. Long meals were served too, with long
intervals between them, during which, in spite of a week of heavy rain,
Di escaped regularly into the gardens and so away to the park. The house
oppressed her. She was restless and ill at ease. She was never missed
because she was never wanted; and she wandered for hours in the park,
listening to the low cry of the deer, standing on the bridge over the
artificial 1745 lake, or pacing mile on mile a sheltered path under the
park wall. The thinking for which she had such ample opportunity did not
come off. It shirked regularly. A certain vague trouble of soul was upon
her, like the unrest of nature at the spring of the year. And day after
day she watched the autumn leaves drop from the trees into the water,
and there was a great silence in her heart, and underneath the silence a
fear--or was it a hope? She knew not.
There was one subject to which Di's thoughts returned, and ever
returned, in spite of herself. John was that subject. Gradually, as the
days wore on, her shamed remorse at having wounded him gave place to the
old animosity against him. She had never been angry with any of her
numerous lovers before. She had, on the contrary, been rather sorry for
them. But she was desperately angry with John. It seemed to her--why she
would have been at a loss to explain--that he had taken a very great
liberty in venturing to love her, and in daring to assert that they were
suited to other.
She went through silent paroxysms of rage against him, sitting on a
fallen tree among the bracken with clenched hands. Her sense of his
growing power over her, over her thought, over her will, was
intolerable. Why so fierce? why such a fool? she asked herself over and
over again. He could not marry her against her will. Indeed, he had said
he did not want to. Why, then, all this silly indignation about nothing?
There was no answer until one day Mrs. Courtenay happened to mention to
Mrs. Garstone, in her presence, the probability of John's eventually
marrying Lady Alice Fane--"a very charming and suitable person," etc.
Then suddenly it became clear to Di that, though she would never marry
him herself, the possibility of his marrying any one else was not to be
borne for a moment. John, of course, was to--was to remain unmarried all
his life. Her sense of the ludicrous showed her in a lightning-flash
where she stood.
To discover a new world is all very well for people like Columbus, who
want to find one. But to discover a new world by mistake when quite
content with the old one, and to be swept towards it uncertain of your
reception by the natives assembling on the beach, is another thing
altogether. For the second time in her life Di was frightened.
"Then all these horrible feelings are being in love," she said to
herself, with a sense of stupefaction. "This is what other people have
felt for me, and I treated it as of little consequence. This is what I
have read about, and sung about, and always rather wished to feel. I am
in love with John. Oh, I hope to God he will never find it out!"
Probably no man will ever understand the agonies of humiliation, of
furious unreasoning antagonism, which a proud woman goes through when
she becomes aware that she is falling in love. Pride and love go as ill
together in the beginning as they go exceeding well together later on.
To be loved is incense at first, until the sense of justice--fortunately
rare in women--is aroused. "Shall I take all, and give nothing?"
Pride, often a very tender pride for the lover himself, asks that
question. Directly it is asked the battle begins.
"I will not give less than all. How _can_ I give all?" The very young
are spared the conflict, because the future husband is regarded only as
the favoured ball-partner, the perpetual admirer of a new existence. But
women who know something of life--of the great demands of marriage--of
the absolute sacrifice of individual existence which it involves--when
they begin to tremble beneath the sway of a deep human passion suffer
much, fear greatly until the perfect love comes that casts out fear.
Some natures, and very lovable they are, give all, counting not the
cost. Others, a very few, count the cost and then give all.
Di was one of these.