NOT TOLD BY DIANA.
Lord Rexborough is rather astonished at Diana's flight.
"What the deuce did I say to make her start off like that?" he
wonders to himself. "I only meant to give her a friendly word of
caution because she seemed a nice fresh innocent little thing, and
it's no more use her thinking of Charlie than the Emperor of China.
And then she cuts up rough and flies off like a young deer. Nothing
so silly as trying to do any one a good turn, particularly a woman
when she's sweet on a man! Well, I've done with her!" And Lord
Rexborough rises and saunters along the conservatory into the hall.
Lady Gwyneth is crossing it, alone. They both pause: a pink flush
crosses her face, he looks a shade embarrassed.
"Will you come into the conservatory?" he asks her, in a low voice.
She shakes her head.
"No, not there: in the billiard-room,--it would seem more natural to
find me there." And she forces a laugh that is hardly mirthful.
He follows her down the corridor to the billiard-room, which is, as
they probably expect to find it, untenanted. Lady Gwyneth takes up a
cue and begins to knock the balls about. Curiously enough, she, who
is an exceptionally good player, misses more than once. After about
a minute she desists, and faces him, leaning on her cue. His eyes
are fixed upon her, have been, as she knows, ever since they entered
the room. A curious contrast, these two,--she so _mignonne_,
white-faced, fair-haired, he so dark and big.
"Well?" she says, at last; but the inflexion of her voice is softer
than it is wont to be, and he, looking at her with a searching
glance, asks,--
"Is it well?"
She utters a little scornful laugh.
"Of course it is well. Am I not rich? and when you saw me last I was
poor, poor as a church mouse. Am I not heart-whole? and when you saw
me last" (her voice trembling a little) "I was heart-broken. I shall
never break my heart for love again: diamonds, not willows, for me.
And you" (turning upon him), "I've never had an opportunity of
congratulating you since that tremendous piece of good luck befell
you a year ago. Odd, our happening to meet here! I suppose Mrs.
Warrington never heard of that little episode in the wilds of
Ireland. What a good thing for you your uncle and cousin did not die
a fortnight sooner! I might have been Lady Rexborough now, or"
(looking keenly at him) "perhaps your love would not have survived
your sudden honors."
"Gwyneth!" he says, in a low tone of reproach. He does not look like
the same man for whom willful Miss Diana took such a violent disgust;
there is nothing coarse or harsh about him now: the dark eyes that
are looking down upon Lady Gwyneth's quivering, excited face are very
sad and soft. As they stand there together, their thoughts go back
to a time, not so very long ago,--something under two years,--when
both their fates had seemed as different from what they are as the
mind could well conceive. She was a penniless, free-hearted,
frank-mannered hoyden, the daughter of an Irish peer, and he was Jack
Blount, with no expectations, not particularly celebrated for morals
or manners, "a bear," most women pronounced, "not a bad fellow," men
said, "and a sportsman to the backbone." The two met and fell in
love. It happened on this wise:
The Earl of Mallow, Lady Gwyneth's father, was as poor as a peer well
could be. He had, what many poor men have, a large family. The sons
went into the army, and the daughters ran wild at home. There was no
going up to London for the season, important as it was that the girls
should make good matches. Lady Gwyneth, the only one old enough, was
presented in Dublin, and now and then got invited to London for a few
weeks, to stay with friends. One May her brother brought home Jack
Blount for salmon-fishing (Lord Mallow had some of the best fishing
on the Blackwater), and Jack was a noted angler. The invitation was
given in this way:
"If you like fishing, and don't mind roughing it, come down home with
me. I can promise you any quantity of salmon; and you won't be
bothered with women. My sisters are more like boys than girls; in
fact, you'd be puzzled to know which they were! They can ride,
shoot, and fish as well as any of us boys."
Colonel Blount rather liked the idea. He did not care for ladies, he
did not believe in them, and thought it a stupid farce to have to
treat them as if he did. Poor Jack's experience of women had been an
unfortunate one. His own mother had been the subject of one of the
most notorious scandals of the day, and from his father, whom he
adored, he never heard anything but curses and invectives against the
sex. He was brought up religiously to love sport and to distrust
women, to look upon them as enemies, to be got the best of if
possible, and to give no quarter to when they fell into his hands.
So Jack had always been used to steer clear of ladies. But when he
came to Ireland and saw this intrepid little maiden, who would have
alarmed most men, he had a new sensation. A fine lady, who wanted to
be waited upon and made love to, if she had the loveliest face in the
world, would have made no impression upon him, steeled as he was
against these subtle wiles; but a girl who could bear any amount of
hardship and fatigue, who could throw a fly and play a twenty-pound
salmon as well as himself, who would ride any horse they put her on,
and not funk a big jump in cold blood,--that was a very different
specimen of womanhood from any it had been his lot to encounter, and
his rough, rude, but withal honest heart went out to her at once.
And to her he was the very _beau-idéal_ of what a man should
be,--utterly manly and fearless, an adept at every sport. She would
have thought a polished, courtly-mannered man a fool; but Jack's
brusque rough-and-ready ways just suited her. She was eminently
un-Desdemona like, but that fair and weak-minded damsel never
listened with more rapt attention to the Moor than Lady Gwyneth to
Jack's adventures in flood and field,--some of them thrilling enough,
though told with due modesty. For sport had filled up the crevices
of Jack Blount's life, much as love-making does other men's: his
blood had been stirred quicker by danger than love; the conquest of a
lion or a grizzly had filled his head with more passionate delight
than the winning of the fairest of women could have done hitherto.
But three weeks in the constant society of this little Amazon had
given him fresh thoughts about womankind: he who had scoffed with
many a bitter, unseemly joke at marriage woke up one morning and
found himself filled with one great desire,--to have this little pale
girl for company during the rest of his pilgrimage through life. And
before nightfall, as they wandered home together from their fishing
expedition, lagging, by mutual though unspoken consent, behind the
rest of the party, there, in the dim wood, the trees making canopy
above their heads, and the dark river swirling round the big rocks
below, he told his "plain, unvarnished tale."
There was not much romance or sentiment about them, but their hearts
were none the less honest or steadfast of purpose one to the other
for that. And so they gave their tryst, and he took the thick gold
ring from his strong hand and gave it to her until he should replace
it by another. To this day Lady Gwyneth wears it, not in the shape
in which he gave it, but beaten out into a heart; and she wears it
next her own.
It was arranged between them that he should speak to Lord Mallow next
day. He felt diffident about it,--he had so little, so very little,
to offer any woman, much less an earl's daughter. But that same
night, when all the household had retired, and he and Lady Gwyneth's
brother smoked their nocturnal pipe together, he heard his fate in
this wise. There had been silence for some minutes, and Lord Vayn
had fidgeted about uneasily. It was lost upon Jack: he was following
the smoke-wreaths up in the air where his castles were, little
thinking, poor fellow, how a few minutes would see them toppling down
into ruined fragments at his feet.
Lord Vayn, having thought over one or two modes of attack, and not
liking either, ended by blurting out his mind pell-mell without much
consideration for his hearer's feelings, only anxious to get his own
share of the unpleasant business over.
"Look here, Jack, old fellow! I've got something deuced disagreeable
to say to you. I may be right, or I may be wrong, I hope to Heaven
wrong. I dare say you can guess what it's about."
"About your sister?" asks Jack, a strange nervous feeling creeping
over him.
"You know, when I asked you here," proceeds Lord Vayn, rushing at his
subject like a horse at a fence he wants to be over, "I thought you
were the safest fellow in the world with women: I thought you hated
them,--you always swore you did. And my sisters are not soft, spoony
sort of girls, Gwyneth least of all. But I can't help seeing that
she's getting fond of you, and, as your marrying her is out of the
question, it's no use playing the fool any longer, and if you're a
gentleman, as I take you to be, I needn't say anything more."
Jack's heavy brows bend together, his teeth clinch. For a minute or
more he makes no answer. Then he says, huskily,--
"I know I have very little to offer a girl,--nothing, indeed; and
what you say about my hating women has been true enough up to the
present moment; but I swear, if you let me have her, neither she nor
any of you shall ever repent it, and I don't think she is a girl who
cares much for money and luxury."
"I dare say you think," returns Lord Vayn, with some heat, "that
because we are poor, as you see we are, the girls are not to look for
much in their husbands; but you're wrong. Because they've nothing
themselves they've got to marry men who have. My dear Blount" (in a
quieter voice), "it's useless your thinking about it. My father and
mother would not hear of it for an instant: they are furious already,
and I have had the pleasant task delegated to me of--of--well, of
giving you your _congé_."
Jack's face grows dark and angry.
"It is rather late in the day," he says. "You should have spoken
sooner."
"Spoken sooner!" retorts the other, angrily. "Why, until three days
ago it never entered our brains that you could--could----"
"Presume to aspire to Lady Gwyneth's hand!" finishes Jack, grimly.
"Something like that," returns Lord Vayn. "Hang it, Blount! it's not
a very pleasant thing to have to say to a fellow, but you must know
that though you're a very good fellow in some ways, and a sportsman,
you're hardly the sort of man in any respect that one would care to
give one's daughter or sister to, even if you had anything to keep
her on."
Jack listens in silence to the words whose bitter truth goes well
home: he does not feel any anger against the man who speaks them,
only a chill pain creeps into his heart. He begins to see the folly
of which he has been guilty, and the thought that pains him most is
that she will suffer for it. Poor little girl! He heaves a bitter
sigh.
"Can't I do anything?" he says, almost humbly. "If I waited----"
"My good fellow," retorts the other, angrily, "you are a man of the
world. You know that if you waited forever it would be as impossible
as it is now. And I am commissioned by my father and mother both, to
say that under no circumstances would they hear of you as a husband
for Gwyneth, Don't make my task any harder than you can help."
"That is enough," says poor Jack. "You need say no more. I will
pack my things to-night, and to-morrow you will have seen the last of
me."
So saying, he goes, leaving Lord Vayn savage with himself for his own
roughness, savage with his sister for her folly, most savage of all
with his parents, who have thrust this hateful office upon him and
lost him a friend. Somehow he feels that even rough, downright Jack
Blount would have acquitted himself more tenderly had the ungracious
task been his. Jack goes to his room, and begins to pack, with a
heavier heart than he has known since his father died. Four weeks
ago how little he dreamed
"His heart would ever ache or break
For love's sake,"
He had some poor consolation in feeling that he had but to speak the
word and she would go to him anywhere; she was not a girl to be
daunted by parents' vetoes; but that word he did not mean to speak.
No! now it was put before him, he saw how poor and untempting was the
fate he had to offer her: parting from her friends with only him to
depend upon (and poor Jack's opinion of himself was the very
humblest), she would have a hard time of it, poor little girl! he
told himself. One thing he bitterly regretted,--having spoken to
her: he blamed himself: he had meant to speak to her father first,
but it had slipped out unawares.
The next morning Lord and Lady Mallow met him at breakfast with
serene faces, as though unconscious of what had passed the night
before. They made no allusion to his departure, though the dog-cart
was ordered for ten o'clock. Lady Gwyneth was not present, neither
was Lord Vayn. Breakfast over, the two other girls went out. Jack
brought his courage to the sticking-point.
"Lady Mallow," he said, quietly, "will you allow me to wish your
daughter good-by before I go?"
Lady Mallow looked at her husband.
"Better not," he uttered, suavely.
"I ask it as a great favor," says Jack, huskily. "I can see her in
your presence, if you wish it so."
"Under those circumstances, I think, my dear," remarks Lord Mallow to
his wife, "we need not object to grant Colonel Blount's last request.
Will you fetch Gwyneth?"
Lady Mallow goes out, and returns, after a short absence, with her
daughter.
Lady Gwyneth is pale, heavy-eyed: it is easy to see she too has heard
her fate. Poor Jack's honest heart goes out to her: something in his
throat chokes him, a mist gathers before his eyes.
He goes up to her and takes her hand in his.
"Good-by!" he says, huskily. "I was wrong in speaking to you without
Lord Mallow's consent. I forgot I was poor and had no right to think
of you, but I know I could have made you happy if they would have let
me."
"Colonel Blount!" interrupts Lady Mallow.
"Good-by," he says, once more, taking both her hands in his; and,
looking up through a mist of tears, she sees his stalwart form
towering above her, meets his dark, sad, honest eyes, and then he is
gone. Mechanically she stands until she hears the dog-cart drive
away, and then she goes away silently to her room. If he had only
said to her, "Come to me, and you and I will face the world
together," she would have gone to him, would have defied parents,
poverty, anything, everything, for his sake; but he had acquiesced;
he had bidden her good-by: what was there left for her to do? So,
silently, with all the more in her heart because she bore a brave
face, she went away to her own room and fought it out alone. Somehow
she did not believe he would give her up tamely. She buoyed herself
up with the hope that she would hear from him. She did not know that
the strongest argument he used against the impulse to see or write to
her was herself. He was giving her up for her own sake, and that
lent him courage.
But in time she gave up hope, and when some months afterwards she was
in London, and Mr. Desborough proposed to her, she accepted him. She
did it with characteristic frankness.
"I do not care for you," she said. "I will marry you if you like,
but I shall expect to have everything my own way, and to do just as I
like."
Mr. Desborough, who was not in love with her either, but who was
particularly anxious to have a lady of title for his wife, assented
with the best grace he might.
"I hope time----" he murmured.
"No," she answered, brusquely, "time will do nothing more for you;
but if you like to marry me without expecting anything of me, it
makes very little difference to me."
So Mr. Desborough married her, and, by one of the strange ironies in
which fate delights, on the very day that she became his wife, Lord
Rexborough and his son were upset from a boat and drowned, and Jack
Blount was sent for from Mexico to reign in their stead.
This is what lies between them and the past. He looks at her with a
curious emotion. The time that severs them from their last meeting
seems doubly long from all that has happened between; life is changed
for him as her; he is no longer poor Jack Blount with an indifferent
reputation and "that unfortunate story of his mother" attached to
him,--he is my lord, whom mothers and chaperons receive with open
arms, whose free manners and coarse jokes they smile indulgently at,
as proofs of "delightful eccentricity." With a certain grim humor
since his accession to title and fortune, he enjoys making the worst
of himself before ladies, and seeing how much they will not only
tolerate but take from him with a good grace. He rarely meets with a
rebuff. Diana's is the first for many a long day; and he likes her
none the less for it. But he is not improved since he was Jack
Blount. And Lady Gwyneth? She is not improved either; from a frank,
merry hoyden, she has become a fast, brusque woman, careless of the
world's opinion, and only bent on finding opium in excitement, to
still the voice that reminds her of her spoiled life.
And thus they meet. Neither has a guilty thought in their heart of
ever being aught again to the other, and yet, however hopeless, it is
sweet to be together once again, together and alone.
"I watched you all this evening," he says, in a low voice. "I wanted
to find out if you were happy. You laughed and talked."
"Is it only happy people who laugh and talk?" she interrupts him.
"Oh, if so, what a voiceless, mirthless world it would be! Laugh and
talk! I do all day and half the night; and yet----"
"Who is happy?" he answers. "Once now and then, perhaps. It is
happiness to kill a wild beast that has been within an ace of killing
you; it is happiness to land a big salmon you have played for an
hour,--you know that; it is happiness to be well up in a good run on
a good horse. But those things don't last. If I knew what the
hereafter was, if there is one, or, better still, if there is none, I
should say it was happiest of all to be lying fathoms deep under the
sea, or on a battle-field with your foe under you, and a bullet
through your heart."
The speech was eminently characteristic of the man. Lady Gwyneth
recognized the old Jack Blount in it, and smiled a little sadly to
herself.
"You used to talk to me like that long ago," she says. "I did not
understand you then; I thought life a happy thing; but I can
understand you well enough now."
"Are you really unhappy?" he asks, anxiously.
"Have you seen my _husband_?" she says, briefly. "Well, you know
what I was, frank, high-spirited, outspoken. What do you think the
effect would be on me of being tied to a man whom I despise" (with a
gesture of loathing), "despise, oh, more than any words can tell!
All my nature is changed; I hate myself too; I treat him shamefully,
yes! I know it quite as well as other people can tell me; and yet
something in me won't let me alter myself,--I can't. Why does he not
turn round upon me? I should respect him far more if he flew into a
passion with me or bullied me; but he is afraid of me--_afraid of
me_!"
"You are a very little woman," says Lord Rexborough, smiling, "but I
expect you can be rather terrible."
"Do you think so?" she asks, lifting her eyes to his face. "Then"
(sighing) "I suppose I have become rather a vixen."
The door opens: Mr. Warrington and Colonel Fane come in. Neither
knows the story of these two, or dreams of interrupting a
_tête-à-tête_. Mr. Warrington challenges Lady Gwyneth to a game of
billiards, and, as she plays, Lord Rexborough, whilst carrying on a
conversation with Colonel Fane, watches her, and thinks somehow that
the cotton gown in which she used to trip round the worn old
billiard-table at home became her better than the costly lace and
diamonds of to-night; anyhow, it seemed more appropriate.
Presently Mrs. Huntingdon comes in with Captain Montagu.
"Charlie," cries Lord Rexborough, "I'm afraid I frightened that
pretty little friend of yours. I'm too rough for her: she won't have
me at any price."
"Really," utters Mrs. Huntingdon, impatiently, "I am getting
perfectly sick of that girl. Her virtuous airs are quite
insufferable!"
"I don't think they are airs," interposes Colonel Fane. "I fancy the
virtue is quite natural."
"How down you women always are upon each other!" says Lord
Rexborough. "You can never forgive each other for being pretty."
"Pretty!" interrupts Lady Gwyneth: "I should hardly call her that:
she has the _beauté de diable_, freshness."
"Really, Lady Gwyneth," says Captain Montagu, "I think you must allow
that she is pretty."
"Decidedly pretty!" the other men agree.
Mrs. Huntingdon lifts her handsome eyes scornfully.
"I never knew a more striking instance of beauty being 'in the eye of
the beholder,'" she says, throwing herself into a low chair.
"Hush! here is the boy!" whispers Colonel Fane.