DIANA'S STORY.
It is a curious position, that in which I find myself this July
afternoon, sitting on the edge of a fountain, with a future duke in
tears at my feet, not two hundred yards away from a gay and select
crowd, any member or members of whom may at any moment come suddenly
upon us without warning. And I, who have all along hugged my bitter
secret to my heart of hearts, am about to confide it to this boy, who
only one short half-hour ago would have seemed to me the most
impossible recipient for such a confidence.
The little white cloudlets are sailing aloft in the blue heaven, a
tiny breeze stirs the topmost leaves of the big trees, the fountain
sparkles in the sun and comes plashing musically down again into the
broad basin, and I, plucking up heart, force out the words that are
to console my boy lover and make him see reason.
"I want you to believe," I say, laying my hand on his arm, while the
tears spring into my eyes, "that I would not for the world give you
pain willingly. I know myself" (and my voice falters) "how bitter it
is to love in vain."
"What!" he cries, looking up into my face; "do you mean that you love
some one else?"
It is hard, bitterly hard, to say it, but his eager eyes compel the
words out of me.
"Yes," I answer.
"Well," he cries, starting up wrathfully, "you have kept it dark very
carefully, I must say. Pray" (trying to be sarcastic, but failing
utterly), "may I be privileged to know who is my rival?"
"You need not know," I answer, slowly, "since there is no more chance
of my marrying him than of my marrying you."
"Is he married, then?"
"Married!" I repeat, shocked; "of course not! How could one care for
a married man?"
"I have heard of such things," he remarks, bitterly. "Well, then, if
he is not married, what obstacle can there be to his marrying you?"
I avert my face, to hide, if may be, the sudden traitorous color that
dyes my cheeks.
"He does not want to."
There is a pause, during which I watch the movements of a stray
gold-fish in the water whilst my face recovers its normal tint.
"_He does not want to!_" echoes Lord Seldon, at last. "Then, in
heaven's name" (coming round and seating himself beside me), "are you
going to give up everything in life for a man who does not care for
you? Why, you can't go on caring about him forever; nobody does:
people are bound to get over that sort of thing in time"
(unconsciously arguing against his own cause). "Well" (eagerly), "if
you have no heart, have you no ambition? Don't you care to be a
duchess? I know," he says, his bright face flushing, "it sounds very
snobbish to remind you of that, but surely it must go for something."
"What!" I say, looking at him, "would you be content that I should
take you without loving you, just because some day you may be a duke?"
"Lots of women would," he answers, glumly. "No, of course I should
not be content; but, oh, darling" (looking up at me with honest love
in his blue eyes), "I would rather you took me for that than not at
all. Give me a month, two months, let me try to make you love me,
and then, if I fail, I swear to you upon my honor, I will take all
the blame to myself if you find you can't like me."
"It is no use," I cry, feeling the ground slipping away from under
me. "Do not pain me by saying any more: be generous, and believe me
when I tell you that it is utterly, utterly impossible."
He looks at me with eyes in which anger and incredulity are equally
blended.
"Do you mean to say positively," he asks, forcing the words out
slowly, "that you refuse me?--refuse me for good and all?"
"Do not put it in that way," I say, rising to go. "Forget that you
ever asked me, and believe that I would not for the world have given
you pain willingly. Come" (laying my hand on his arm), "let us go
back to Mrs. Warrington."
For the first time he thinks of his appearance. He looks down at the
faint green stains on his clothes, and passes his hand over his hair.
"I can't go back among those people," he says, with hurt boyish
vanity: "it is not pleasant to look as well as to feel that you've
made a fool of yourself."
I look rather ruefully at my own pale gown of _bleu, Watteau ciel_,
as the confectioner thereof fancifully called it, and see on it the
poor boy's tear-stains.
"How am I to get back?" I say, doubtfully, but not wishing to put him
to any pain that I can spare him. "I can hardly go alone."
"Come, then," he utters, brusquely, turning to go.
I feel sorry for him from the bottom of my heart. He has never been
used to contradiction, and takes it very badly. I want to make
friends with him. I long to restore to him his shattered
self-conceit, but am afraid of adding fuel to the fire by anything I
may say: so we hurry along in profound silence. As we emerge from
the avenue I encounter an old friend.
"There is Colonel Fane!" I exclaim: "he will take me to Mrs.
Warrington;" and as he comes towards me Lord Seldon abruptly raises
his hat and leaves me.
"How wild that boy looks!" utters Fane, looking fixedly at me. "What
have you been doing to him?"
"I?--nothing!" I answer, trying vainly to look unconscious. "Have
you seen Mrs. Warrington? She will think I am lost."
"My dear Diana," says that lady, with slight reproach in her voice,
as I join her, "where have you been all this immense time?"
A little later we are on our way to the gate. Mrs. Warrington stops
to speak to some friends, and I stand listlessly aside until she
shall have finished. There are two elegantly-dressed women standing
with their backs to me, and, to my surprise, I hear my name mentioned.
"What can she have done to Lord Seldon?" says one.
"I saw him go off half an hour ago looking as wild as a March hare,
and not long before that they went up the avenue together. She can't
have refused him!"
"My dear," retorts the other, contemptuously, "did the beggar maid
refuse King Cophetua?"
Happily, Mrs. Warrington is moving on. As we drive homewards I feel
very little inclination to talk, nor, apparently, does my companion.
But suddenly, when I am enveloped in a train of thought, she turns to
me, and says,--
"Diana, what became of Lord Seldon?"
"I don't know," I stammer. "I think he went away----"
"Was he ill?"
"I do not think so. He did not say so."
There is a moment's pause. Then she says, looking intently at me,--
"It is not possible that he has proposed to you and that you have
refused him! It is not possible!" she reiterates, as I turn my head
away to conceal my embarrassment. Still I am silent. I will not
tell the truth, but I cannot deny it.
"Diana!" whispers my usually placid friend, with vindictive energy,
"I should like to shake you!"
For the rest of our drive the silence remains unbroken. But later on
there is much conflict of words between us. She insists upon hearing
the whole story, and, under the strictest promise of secrecy, I
repeat it to her, with one exception: I do not tell her the reason I
gave for refusing him; I content myself with saying that I feel it
impossible to care sufficiently for him. She treats this reason with
hottest scorn and contempt. Not like a bright handsome young fellow
like that, the heir to a dukedom and any number of thousands a year!
Preposterous! If he were ugly, ill-tempered, sickly, deformed,
extraordinarily vicious, one could understand it; but a young fellow
with every gift the world values, and devoted to me into the bargain,
as every one could see,--it was sheer suicidal folly.
"Why did you not tell me," I say, reproachfully, "if you really saw
that he cared for me?"
"Because," Mrs. Warrington returns, with exasperation, "such is the
delightful perversity of girls, that if they think a man likes them,
or that their friends want them to marry him, they immediately set
their faces dead against it and say the y can't love him. Love!"
(wrathfully): "I am sick of the very name of love! And what do girls
know about it, pray, if they are modest and properly brought up? I
am more convinced every day of my life that the French system is the
proper one,--don't allow girls to have a voice in the matter.
Love-matches indeed! A pretty end they generally come to! It is
almost always the case that, if you meet with a married couple who
dislike each other and quarrel more than usual, it was a
_love_-match."
I do not believe for a moment that these are my dear Mrs.
Warrington's real sentiments; only, for some cause or other, she
seems to have set her heart upon my marrying Lord Seldon. Indeed, it
is a far harder task to encounter all her arguments, her entreaties,
her reasons, her insistance, than it was to repel his. Finally she
leaves me in anger. What can I do? I would not for the world
displease her willingly; and yet the other alternative is simply
impossible. I shut myself up in my room: we were engaged to a ball
that evening, but I had no heart to go, and my hostess excused me.
Then, as I lay on my couch, chewing the cud of fancies that were,
alas! all bitter, a letter was brought to me. I knew the scrawling
hand, more scrawling than ever to-night: the inside was blurred and
blotted, but you may depend I looked upon it in no unkind spirit of
criticism.
"DEAREST" (he wrote),--"I know I behaved like a _brute_ this
afternoon. I lost my temper, and it was very presumptuous of me to
be so sure of you; but somehow I suppose I have been brought up to
think I had only to ask and have, and I dare say it will do me good
to have a little of the conceit knocked out of me. Only, darling,
don't, for God's sake, make up your mind against me; don't settle
anything in a hurry. Perhaps after a time you will see that it's no
good thinking about that other fellow (oh, how I wish I could shoot
him!--what a dunder-headed ass he must be!), or he may get married,
and you know it's simply ridiculous to think that any one so _lovely_
as you could ever be _allowed_ to be an old maid. I can't think why
you will persist in thinking me such a boy; lots of women much older
than you don't, and, you know, apart from my being a long way past of
age, I've seen a great deal of life, and knocking about as I've done
puts years on to a fellow. But I can't believe seriously that my
being young is really an objection in your eyes. You surely don't
want a fellow old enough to be your father; though I have heard of
girls taking odd fancies. I'll wait a year, darling, if you
like,--two years, if it would make you care for me any more. I could
live on _hope_. All I ask you is, just to let me hope. If you
don't, I don't know what will become of me; the very thought, as I
write this, drives me nearly _mad_. I've fancied myself in love
before, but I swear to you I never cared for anybody a fiftieth part
as I do for you, and if you've heard stories about me don't believe
them, because there are always lots of people to tell lies about a
fellow. Then you know how fond I am of Curly: I look upon him quite
like a _brother_ already, and there isn't anything I won't do for him
if you'll only give me the chance. Oh, Di, my darling, don't spurn
_my heart's devotion_ and send me to the devil, for to the devil I
shall go if you won't have me. Think it over: you may tell Mrs.
Warrington, if you like; I know she'll stand my friend, and I have no
pride now, for if you don't have me there is nothing more for me in
this life, and I don't care who knows it. Montagu has been dining
with me; he saw there was something up, and I felt so bad I could not
help telling somebody; and he has cheered me up a bit. Good-night,
my dearest love. I feel I could go on writing to you all night, only
if I wrote forever I couldn't say more than that I love you with all
my soul, and that I shall always be your most devoted _slave_ and
_worshiper_.
"SELDON."
I read on until I come nearly to the end, full of kind thoughts and
regret for the young fellow whose honest love shines through every
line, but when I reach the passage about Captain Montagu a flood of
anger rushes to my heart, the indignant tears to my eyes. Great
heavens! was it not enough before!--and now he can coolly listen to
Lord Seldon's confidences, and "cheer him up." Cheer him up!--that,
I suppose, bitterly, was by holding out hopes. I fling the letter
from me, and, springing up, race to and fro in my room, in such a
storm of passionate anger as I never yet felt, never till this moment
imagined I could feel. Presently my rage subsides into grief, and I
fling myself on my knees and sob my very heart out. No matter that
it is unreasonable, no matter that I have long ago renounced all hope
of being anything to him, no matter that I revile him to myself and
call him heartless, unfair, dishonorable: the sting of this new
cruelty is none the less sharp. An impotent desire for revenge takes
possession of me in this first burst of outraged love and pride. I
think--yes, I think if it would give him pain I could marry Lord
Seldon to-morrow. But it would not: that is the sting of it. He
would doubtless come to the wedding, and make the most charming,
graceful speech on the occasion, and I should have spoiled my life
for nothing. Spoiled my life! I, Diana Carew, who have no prospect
of anything but humility and poverty, spoil my life by marrying a man
able to give me every pleasure and luxury the world holds! Ay, the
world! But then I have never looked there for happiness. I am not
ambitious. The first grief that ever came into my simple Paradise
came with my first glimpse of the world, the first taste of the fruit
of the tree of the knowledge of (worldly) good and evil. The thought
of an atmosphere of fashion, of fine company, fine houses, fine
clothes, fine jewels, does not warm my heart: it only seems to make
more barren and void a future which I should pass in the perpetual
society of a man I could not love. I found him pleasant enough as a
friend, but when I force myself to regard him in the light of the one
being to whom I am to look in the future for love, sympathy, comfort,
my whole soul revolts. To marry a man, too, against the wish of his
family!--to be looked down upon by them!--in time, perhaps (what more
likely ending to a boyish fancy!) to be treated with coldness and
neglect by him! No: the prospect of being Lady Seldon might seem
fair enough to a girl who had been educated in the world's creeds,
who had been faithfully taught the worship of mammon, but not to a
simple country-girl, who values not pomp or grandeur one rush when
they are divorced from love and truth and faith. To marry a man
simply because he has a title or money seems in my eyes the basest
degradation. How is it different from standing up in an Eastern
market and being knocked down to the highest bidder? But then I am
not a well-trained, well-tutored young lady: I am only a little girl
who has grown up wild in the country and been allowed the run of a
library of old-fashioned romances.