NOT TOLD BY DIANA.
Diana is sitting over the fire one dull November afternoon three days
after her return from Alford. She has brought home a goodly store of
books, and is deep in one of them. She has glanced through the
window and assured herself that there is nothing to attract her out
of doors; her conscience does not prick her on account of the dogs,
as they have had a famous run before lunch: so she arms herself with
a novel with the real delight of a passionate lover of reading, piles
up the blazing fire with more wood, and ensconces herself in a cosy
chair with her feet on the fender. The bright flames throw a ruddy
light upon her hair and a delicate pink shade on her face; her
slender ringless hands look scarce strong enough to support the heavy
tome over which she is poring so intently; her small slippered feet
are crossed on the fender, and she has evidently made up her mind to
an afternoon of uninterrupted enjoyment. But she has only read a
chapter and a half when the unwonted sound of the door-bell makes her
start.
"Oh, dear!" she says, half aloud, with an accent of unfeigned
disappointment, "who can it possibly be? Just as I was getting so
intensely interested, too!"
She is not left long in suspense. Gay herself ushers in, with the
ceremony due to so important a guest, "Sir Hector Montagu."
"You are not well," says Diana, in a tone of friendly interest, as
soon as the first greetings are over. "How pale you look!" He takes
a seat opposite to her, and for a moment makes no answer. She has
time to note the haggard, hunted expression of his face, changed
almost out of knowledge in the last three days.
"It is no use," he says, in a low, agitated voice: "I cannot be
silent any longer. I gave you my word not to open my lips about my
love at Alford, and I kept it, did I not?--kept it to the letter.
But it is too strong for me. Can you not give me hope? Oh, for
God's sake, if you can, do!"
And the hunted eyes look at her in terrible earnest. At his words,
all the kindly warm feeling of friendship for him that has grown up
in her heart during the last three weeks dies out and gives way to a
cold feeling of repulsion. Her face becomes pale, and she
shivers,--ever so little,--but yet he sees it.
"What is it," he cries, in a voice of indignant pain, "that repels
you so? Am I loathsome? Am I something to shrink from as you might
from a leper? Am I so repulsive that even you, who are so good and
charitable you would not willingly pain any one, cannot but shiver at
the sound of my voice when it speaks of love?"
Diana's kind heart is stung by remorse.
"Oh, no! no! do not say that!" she cries, hastily, and then looking
round as though to conjure help from some invisible presence. "Oh!"
she says, remorsefully, clasping her hands, "what can I do to make
him not care for me?"
He makes a great effort over himself, but his eyes are full of
unutterable pain. Presently he says, humbly,--
"Could you not try to tolerate me?--could you not get accustomed to
the thought of me by degrees? And then surely, in time, my love for
you could not fail to bring out some answering feeling in your heart."
Her eyes are fixed mournfully on the fire; she does not know how to
answer him, since it is impossible that she can give him hope. He
takes faint courage from her silence, and continues:
"After that night at Alford I did everything in my power to forget
you. I vowed that I would conquer my love, but" (sighing) "it was
too strong for me. Ever since my father's death I have occupied
myself perpetually about the place, trying to get oblivion by hard
work both bodily and mental. But all the time I hungered for the
sight of you; and when you came you made the place heaven for me, as
I knew you would. God knows what a bitter effort it cost me to keep
silent all the time; but I had given you my word. Now I must speak."
Diana, genuinely distressed, casts about her for something that will
make her refusal of him less harsh.
"I wish you would not persist in thinking so well of me," she says,
rather forlornly. "I can't think why you should care so much about
me: indeed, I am not so very nice, really; you would be very much
disappointed in me."
"Should I?" he answers, eagerly. "I am quite content to risk that."
"But," she says, raising troubled brown eyes to his, and trying back
since her last words were unsuccessful, "surely it could be no
happiness to you, to any man, to have a woman who could not make the
smallest, faintest pretense of loving him. And" (sorrowfully,
because she hates to give him pain) "I could not."
"It seems strange," he says, turning his eyes from hers and gazing
into the fire. "I used to be rather a proud fellow, but now I seem
to myself a very abject. I would rather have your indifference than
any other woman's love. I would rather" (looking at her with fierce,
miserable eyes) "have you if I knew you hated me than go without you."
Diana's resources have come to an end. What can one say to a madman?
She takes refuge in silence. Oh, if her father would only come in!
she thinks; if some diversion of any kind would occur to put an end
to this miserable _tête-à-tête_! But nothing does happen, and she
sits staring mutely at the fire and trying to get inspiration out of
the glowing logs. But none comes, and, after a long, unbroken
silence, she says, desperately,--
"What am I to say to you?"
"Say!" he cries, clutching at the very faintest ray of hope; "say you
will try. Think about it; try to get used to the thought; let me
come and see you often; tell me how to make you like me. What is
there in the world I would not do or compel myself to, if it made you
think more kindly of me? If you send me away" (feverishly) "you send
me to the devil! I shall throw up everything at home and go away
somewhere, to Africa or China,--it is all the same to me, as long as
I only put an impossible distance between myself and the sight of
you."
"What!" cries Diana, "and give up all the plans for doing good that
you have looked forward to for years, now when everything is in your
power, in your own hands?"
"Yes," he says, bitterly, "even so. I am a poor philanthropist, am I
not, to let all my good resolves be balked by a pet at Fate; but if I
stayed here without you I should go mad: there is madness somewhere
in the family, I believe" (looking rather wild).
Then, as he sees Diana's frightened look, he says, calmly,--
"No, no; do not be afraid. I am sane enough; only about going to the
farther ends of the earth I am quite serious. Oh, Diana," coming
closer to her and taking one white, reluctant hand, "think what we
might do together, how happy we would make our people, how, working
together, we should strive to lessen some of the gigantic burden of
sorrow and want that grinds the souls and bodies of the poor. Has
that no weight with you,--you who are so pitiful, so tender-hearted
and charitable? Your life could not but be a happy one, since it
would be so full of goodness and charity, and you would be loved"
(his deep voice quivering with strong passion) "as I believe before
God no woman was ever loved before. What is my fate to be? is it to
be a life of love, a life of usefulness and honor, or will you
condemn me to be a miserable outcast?"
He is pouring out his very soul in his words: it is no exaggerated
language, such as men think right to use on such occasions; every
syllable comes straight from his suffering heart.
Diana is overcome: the intensity of his passion masters her. Her
face is ashen pale: her lips will scarce unclose to pronounce her
heart's death-warrant. In a moment of time she has thought of her
barren future, of the hopelessness of her own love, and as he draws
the vivid picture of his own life to come, which, according to her
fiat, shall be good or evil, the thought of sacrificing herself dawns
in her heart.
"Let it be as you wish!" she almost gasps.
He seizes both her hands and looks into her eyes as though he would
pierce her very soul.
"Are you in earnest?" he says. "Oh, for God's sake don't deceive
me!--don't promise and take your word back again, unless you want me
to blow my brains out!"
She draws away from him and stands upright.
"If you are willing to let me sacrifice myself," she says, looking at
him with cold misery in her eyes,--"well" (with a gasping sigh), "so
be it!"
"It shall not be a sacrifice," he cries, passionately: "you will, you
shall be happy. Unless you are the most unreasonable woman God ever
made,--and I know you are not that,--you must be content with your
life: nay, you shall love me yet."
For one moment, in his wild joy of having her, willing or unwilling,
he loses his stern self-control and lays his burning lips on her
cold, most reluctant ones. And if the King of Terrors had claimed
her as his bride, and sealed her to himself with his icy kiss, she
could not have shrunk and shivered with a more ghastly horror. But
Hector, if even he is conscious of it, does not care: his blinded
eyes see only the radiant picture of the future wherein she shall
love him as he loves her.
She starts from him, crying, with unconscious cruelty,--
"Do not make me hate you! You know I have no love to give you. I am
sacrificing my future to yours. Do not make the sacrifice too
impossible!"
"Forgive me," he says, humbly, taking her cold hand quietly.
Before she knows what he is doing, he has slipped on her finger a
ring blazing with diamonds.
"Do you know," he whispers, triumphantly, "I have carried that about
with me ever since the day I went to London when you were first at
Alford, in the forlorn wild hope that some day this might come to
pass?"
Diana feels inclined to tear it off and fling it away. What cares
she though he could deck her from head to foot with diamonds, each
one as big as the Koh-i-noor? Would they make her heart less heavy,
her sacrifice less bitter?
"I know," he utters, an uneasy flush coming to his dark brow, "that
you cannot get reconciled to the idea all at once. Perhaps you hate
me for having taken an unfair advantage of you, but you will think
better of it in time. Only don't, I implore you, steel your heart
against me: try, when I am gone, to think more kindly of me. I won't
stop now" (looking wistfully at her, as though hoping she might bid
him stay).
She does not: she is longing to be rid of his hateful presence, to be
alone with her gigantic new misery,--the worst, she thinks now, that
has ever befallen her. So, with one lingering clasp of her unwilling
hand, he goes,--goes, astounding as the fact may seem, wildly,
feverishly happy.
Diana, left to herself, feels like one in a dream. She moves to the
window and looks out at the chill dull day, chill and dull as her own
hopes of the future,--looks with vague eyes at the bare trees with
their scanty remnant of yellow leaves, at the sodden gravel-walk, the
few straggling bits of color among the dying autumn flowers. She
shivers, and comes back to the warm fire and leans with one arm on
the mantel-shelf and her head resting on her hand. Glancing
unconsciously downwards, her eyes light upon the ring which is
flashing back a hundred lovely lights from the glowing flames. She
drags it off and flings it away from her, and then, as a sudden
remembrance darts across her, she tears out her handkerchief and
passes it sharply again and again over her lips until the blood
comes. The lips that she had meant should never more be touched by
mortal man! that until now had been sacred to the memory of that one
golden day! She begins to realize what she has done. A vista of
unspeakable horror opens before her. What! to live in the house that
is yet his home, where he needs must come and she needs must see him,
and, seeing, love him, though she is his brother's wife? And at this
ghastly thought she flings herself down on the ground and sobs and
moans with such terrible anguish that, could the man who was so
confident of winning her love see her, he must needs relinquish all
hope.
Sir Hector mounted his horse,--
"He gave his bridle-rein a shake,"
and rode off triumphantly, with flashing eyes. In his exultation he
tossed a sovereign to the old man who did duty as groom and gardener
at Carew Court. The latter, gazing at his retreating form, had half
a mind to run after him and ask if he had not mistaken the gold piece
for a shilling, but pleased himself by deciding that it was intended
as a gift, now Sir Hector had come into so much wealth and splendor.
"Anyhow," he remarked to himself, "it's nothin' to him, and it's a
fortin' to me." Saying which, after one more loving glance, he put
it away in his waistcoat-pocket, where it warmed the cockles of his
old heart.
Meantime, Sir Hector rode on his way. For the first mile he felt
nothing but a wild sense of triumph; at the second, an unpleasant
remembrance of Diana's stony look of misery thrust itself upon him;
at the third, a reaction came, and he pulled up his horse suddenly by
the roadside. Bruno, having had a tolerably long journey, was not
fretful or impatient at this sudden pause, but betook himself,
unchecked, to searching in the hedge for some stray bit of edible
green, wherewith to beguile himself whilst awaiting his master's
pleasure. If any one had come along the road just then they might
have been astonished on this chilly November afternoon to see a horse
and his rider stationed by the hedge-side, as though it were a
broiling afternoon and they were taking shelter from the too ardent
rays of a July sun. Sir Hector's brows were deeply knit. Here, in
the hushed gray stillness, between the two hedgerows of wintry red
berries and tangled brambles, he was fighting with himself the
hardest battle he had ever yet been called upon to fight during his
six lustres of life,--fighting with the hopes that were dearer to him
than life. One horrible thought had taken possession of him,--the
same one that had moved Diana to her outburst of anguish: it was the
thought of his brother. He knew well enough that she had loved him,
that it was that love which had stood between himself and her before,
that for aught he knew was standing between them now. Had he not
been in the same house with her for weeks only two months ago, and
though over his father's death-bed he had wrung from him, on certain
conditions, the oath that he would never speak to Diana again of
love, what faith was there to be put in him? Had he not at Alford,
the very same evening that he had volunteered to withdraw himself
from his (Hector's) light, made open and violent love to her? But
came the ghastly thought, suppose it turned out as he hoped, suppose
Diana came to care for him: could he hope to keep her forever out of
sight of Charlie? And suppose when she did meet him, after however
long a time, the old love came back? Even if he trusted implicitly
in her high principle, would that hinder his own jealous heart from
beating with furious suspicion, even hatred of his brother,--of them
both, perhaps? And yet to tear this new hope, that had seemed like
the unclosing of heaven's gates to him, out of his heart, to leave a
torn, gaping wound, that all time would fail to cicatrize!
It is over; with one throe of agony he has torn the dear hope out of
his life. He picks up the reins, turns his horse's head, and rides
swiftly back to Carew Court. The old groom, seeing him come back, is
smitten with a grievous suspicion that he has discovered his error
and returned for the sovereign, and is preparing to think meanly of
him in his disappointed heart. But Sir Hector only throws him the
reins, muttering that he has forgotten something, and turns hastily
to the house. The hall-door is ajar: he pushes it open and goes in.
No one meets him, and he makes his way to the room where he left
Diana. Without knocking, he opens the door, and sees her prone by
the fireside, wailing and weeping in her bitter abandonment. She
does not hear him, and he stands for a moment looking at her.
"It is well that I came," he thinks, with a bitter pang.
He closes the door, and she, hearing the sound, turns quickly.
"Dry your tears," he says, in a harsh, husky voice; "do not sob in
that agonized way;" for, try as she may, she cannot all at once still
the gasping throes that shake her slender frame. "I have come to
release you."
"Yes, yes," she cries, eagerly; "you are right; you see it could not
have been. Oh" (rising to her feet and giving a sigh of utter
relief), "I am glad that you see it too. There," she says,
stretching out a hand to him that is no longer unwilling, and smiling
through her tears, "I will make a fresh compact with you. I will
always be your friend,--your best friend."
"Never!" he answers, harshly, more pained than words could express at
her joyful acceptance of his bitter sacrifice. Surely she who was
his ideal of all that was tender and womanly might have some
intuitive sympathy for the great waste and havoc of his life, which
she herself, however unwittingly, has caused! "After to-day, if I
can help it, I will never see you again."
"You will think better of it," she says, and all the time she is
stealing furtive glances around to see what has become of the ring
she flung away in her disgust. Presently she espies it glittering
behind the leg of a chair. He has turned away, and is looking with
miserable eyes into the fire, and she takes the opportunity of
stooping to pick it up and slip it on her finger again. As if he had
not seen it lying the very first moment he entered the room!
Diana stands looking at him, rather embarrassed how to return it.
She does not want to give him pain, but she cannot keep this valuable
token that but so late was the badge and symbol of the loathed
enslavement of her future. As she is casting about uneasily in her
mind for some appropriate yet unwounding words with which to return
it, he turns and looks at her.
"Let me look at you for the last time!" he mutters, in a voice harsh
with strangled emotion; "let me be quite sure that the woman who
spoiled my life was as lovely as I thought her!"
Diana stands before him with the color shifting uneasily in her face:
not even the hitter fit of crying has made her unbeautiful. The
troubled brown eyes look up at him with unfeigned sorrow for his
pain. He gives one long fixed look at her. "Good-by," he says, with
a sigh, wrung from the depths of his heart, not attempting to touch
her, or to take other farewell than that one sorrowful word. With
that he turns to go.
"Stop!" she says, detaining him: "this ring" (drawing it quickly from
her finger),--"please take it."
He grasps it with mingled wrath and pain, and flings it furiously
into the fire's red heart. But his fury has more of pain than anger
in it.
He is gone, and Diana on her knees is carefully rescuing the costly
bauble from its fiery grave. When it is cool enough, she wipes it,
and lays it aside to be returned on some future occasion. She feels
very sorry for him, but in truth and reality she does not even dimly
guess at the bitter pain she has inflicted upon him. We know well
enough our own pangs, but which of us ever realizes those of his
brother man?