DIANA'S STORY.
How poor words are, how all inadequate to express the great joys and
sorrows of our lives! Is it not proof of this that when we are (how
rarely!) overtaken by great gladness, we say we are _unutterably_
happy?--if we want to describe anything, either of pleasure or pain,
transcending the common limits of every-day experience, we are
reduced to saying, "words fail to express," etc. Is there some
language among the dead ones in which bygone ages could pour out the
torrent of their joys and woes without being hampered by the paucity
of superlatives which afflicts me at this moment? I give it up. I
cannot tell you how happy I am,--so happy that a vein of fear runs
through my gladness that such utter bliss cannot last. It is no
dream: I am wide, wide awake, and Charlie is sitting opposite to me.
He wished to sit next me, but I begged him to sit opposite instead,
though I was too shy to tell him why. It is because I want to see
him, to feast my eyes on his face with my old insatiable love of good
looks. And now I need never again steal furtive glances at the
bright debonnair face. I may fix my eyes upon it without dropping
them guiltily when they meet his. Are the rest of the party cheerful
and merry, I wonder? I hardly know: our spirits are so exuberant,
after our long famine of mirth, that if none of the others unclosed
their lips, it must needs have seemed a cheery gathering. Papa looks
very bright, I remark: is it from the contagion of my happiness, or
from some secret gladness of his own? Ah, I can wish him joy now
without the shadow of a selfish regret creeping in to mar the
genuineness of my sympathy. One's father naturally seems older to me
than any other man of the same age, but, now I come to think of it,
there is hardly more difference between his age and Claire's than
between Charlie's and mine.
Claire comes running into my room just before dinner.
"My dear," she whispers, her pretty face beaming with kindness and
congratulation, "how glad I am at your happiness! Did I not tell you
to trust, and all would be well?"
"Ah, Claire," I cry, flinging my arms round her, "I can't tell you
how utterly happy I am. Was there ever any one in this world so
fortunate as I? I am quite sorry I abused the poor world, when it
is, after all, the happiest, delightfulest place one can imagine."
"Do not forget, dearest, where all your thanks are due," she says,
softly, and, kissing me once again heartily, goes out. _I do not
forget_! On my knees I am thanking God with all the intensity of
which my heart is capable for his exceeding goodness to me. There is
one person who does not seem quite to share the general gladness.
That is Colonel Fane. He is preoccupied at dinner, and goes off
alone afterwards with his cigar. It is a glorious moonlight night.
Charlie and I wander back to the place of our meeting. Ah, what a
night!--a night to live over again in memory all the nights of one's
life, if one lived to be as old as Methuselah, sure, quite sure, that
even in the longest, happiest life there could never come two such.
Dark pine-clad mountains standing out against the sapphire sky,
bright waters flashing back the moon's streaming silver, nightingales
answering each other from tree to tree, and my hands clasped upon the
arm of the one man the world has ever held, will ever hold, for me.
And this time last night--nay, only five short hours ago,--he seemed
as far removed from me, as unattainable, as that glorious evening
star yonder.
"Little darling," says the voice of my beloved, presently, "are you
quite sure you have nothing on your conscience to confess to me?"
"On my conscience!" I repeat, slowly turning my willing and most
guiltless eyes to his.
The mere sound of his voice is delightful to me, even if it were
propounding the Sphinx's riddle. That does not seem much more
impossible to guess than his present meaning.
"Are you quite sure," with a little jealous accent that delights
me,--"are you quite sure you have not been flirting just a very
little bit with Fane?"
"_I!_" I answer, in a tone wherein astonishment and reproach do
battle royal for victory.
"Little darling, of course I know you did not," he answers, hastily;
"only he is evidently most confoundedly put out by my appearance on
the scene. Did you not notice how glum and silent he was at dinner?
Such a cheery fellow as he is usually."
"Absurd!" I answer, with scorn. "Colonel Fane looks upon me as a
brother."
"Oh, does he?" answers my lover, with an amused smile. "You little
innocent child" (taking my face between his hands and looking
straight into my eyes), "I think a man would be puzzled to be with
you long and keep up that useful little fiction of fraternal feeling."
He is quite mistaken in his supposition; but it pleases me, since it
shows the value he sets upon me,--pleases me far better than if it
were true. I never want to know the pain again of being loved by a
man to whose affection I can make no return.
It is decided that we are still to continue our Swiss trip, but to be
at home again by the time Curly leaves Eton, instead of his joining
us abroad, as had been proposed when the thought of returning to
Carew Court had been so hateful to me. I shall always love
Switzerland better than any country save my own,--not for the sake of
her beauty only, but in memory of the happy days I spent on her
glorious heights, in her tranquil valleys, on her blue lakes, by her
silver streams, in her quaint old towns. I know not when or where I
was happiest:--if it was gliding along the lakes, with the red sunset
kindling the waters into flame and purpling the mountain-sides; in
the delicious Vevay gardens, listening to the entrancing strains of
the string hand; driving along the lovely valley of the Arve, where
the water leaps flashing against the sunshine; at Chamouni, in
glorious sight of the great snow-king, standing against the clear
blue sky; among the lovely scenery from Argentiers to Martigny, with
its wealth of wild flowers and ferns, crystal streams, luxuriant
trees, and distant view of the sharp aiguilles, with their
myosotis-colored background. Every scene is indelibly fixed on my
mind, every spot we visited,--the ice-caves, green and transparent as
our English seas at calm, the awe-striking Gorge de Trient, where I
fell into a panic lest we two, in the zenith of our happiness, should
be engulfed in the black seething waters, sweet Lucerne, peaceful
Inturlachen, pretty, picturesque Thun, quaint old Berne, Ouches,
Lausanne,--all the lovely haunts of fair Helvetia. We were early in
the season, and did not meet many of our own country-people,--a
chance bride and bridegroom, generally French or German, whom we
regarded, Charlie and I with furtive sympathy, a few Americans,
pretty, well _chaussées_ and well dressed, and a few Russians.
Everywhere we go, my generous lover insists upon heaping me with
presents, until at last I rebel.
"Don't think me ungracious," I plead, "but when you give me all these
beautiful things which I have not been used to, and don't want, it
makes me quite unhappy. If" (with a slight accent of reproach) "I
did not care for you, and you were trying to win me over by gifts,
there might be something in it; but when you know----" And my eyes,
to spare the modesty of my lips, finish the sentence.
"Little darling," he says, in answer, "don't you think it's rather
selfish of you to deprive me of the greatest pleasure I have in the
world?"
That journey, than which none was ever more sadly begun, more
triumphantly concluded, comes to an end at last. We are on English
shores and in London. Charlie and I separate with bitter reluctance,
though it is only for a week or two, whilst he joins his mother and
brings her hack to Alford. When Curly has gone back to Eton for his
last term, I am to go to Alford for a short visit, and in October we
are to be married.
"It seems an eternity to October," he grumbles; "but of course you
are right; we must not seem to have forgotten poor Hector." And a
shadow comes across his clear brow.
Curly is delighted, when he has shaken off one or two loyal regrets
for his friend Lord Seldon.
"I think he's getting over it," he whispers me, with a sagacious nod.
"I introduced him this Eton and Harrow match to one of Archdale's
sisters,--Viola, the dark one; and, considering that he swore he'd
never have anything to do with a woman again, he seemed to be getting
on pretty well. One thing, he had the right one to help him: he
won't ask Miss Viola to share his coronet in vain. Oh, Di! how could
you be such a little donkey? Not but what Charlie's a stunning good
fellow; only I should have liked to see you a duchess. And the Dad
too!--only fancy the Dad getting spoony at his time of life!" (for
Claire has consented to marry papa when I have left the old home).
"I'm rather glad as it has turned out. She's so awfully sweet and
good, Claire, she won't be trying to set the Dad against us, like
most step-mothers would. And then," adds Curly, practically, "that
five hundred a year of hers will be very useful to them: it isn't as
if she had nothing; and the old place would have been awfully dull
without a woman."
I am going to divide my three hundred a year between papa and Curly,
for Charlie refuses to have me as a dowered bride, in however small a
degree, and I,--I love to owe everything to him. So he has combated
my father's and brother's objections, and insists upon having his own
way in this matter, at all events.
My first meeting with Lady Montagu is a painful one,--we both cry
floods of tears; but, after we have been together a few days, she
steals behind me, and, taking my head between her small white
fingers, she kisses it, and in a tone tremulous with emotion,
whispers,--
"Do not think, my child, that I love you the less because my manner
has been a little constrained towards you lately. I could not quite
forget" (with a sob) "poor Hector. But there is no one in the world
I should love so much to have for a daughter."
My wedding-day has come: it dawns clear and bright, with an Italian
sky, and the glorious warmth of July. Gay is radiant at this
auspicious omen. "Happy is the bride that the sun shines on!" she
chirps, over and over again, as, with loving fingers whose alacrity
is a little delayed by joyful agitation, she apparels me in my bridal
gear. The new maid is not allowed to lay one finger upon me so long
as I am Diana Carew. I am Gay's own child, that she has brought up
from my very tenderest youth, and no one, she and I resolve, shall
supersede her so long as I am still the child of the house. Gay is
in raptures, then, because the sun shines; but I--! The sun can add
no joy to mine; a deluge could hardly take from it; but of course it
is far better that everything should go smoothly and auspiciously.
It is to be a very quiet wedding, no one but ourselves,--papa, Lady
Montagu, Curly, Claire (Colonel Fane is away), and Lord Rexborough,
who is to be best man. He and I are tremendous friends since Curly's
accident. I understand him so much better, and his manner is so far
gentler and less rough than it used to be. I confess frankly to
having misjudged him: he has a thoroughly kind heart under that rough
exterior, which was more affected than natural, I verily believe.
The sun shines with a hearty good will upon us, shines in a flood
through the stained window over the altar, and plays a thousand
pranks with my white attire, decking it with vivid, unbride-like blue
and red, green and gold. But I am so confident of my future
happiness that I would have gone to church clad in black from head to
foot with profound indifference. There are no other wedding guests,
save my poor, who have collected in force at the lower end of the
church, and in the church-yard. As I go out leaning on the arm of my
husband, of whom I feel so utterly, unspeakably proud, they press
forward with hearty blessings and good will. The unbidden tears rush
to my eyes: these sincere good wishes seem better worth having to me
than the congratulations of half a dozen of dukes and duchesses.
They are to have a dinner when we are gone, which will be as soon
after the wedding as I can put off my bride's dress and don my
traveling-garb; for we are going up to town by the two o'clock train,
and have to drive six miles to the station.
Dearly as I love my husband, fearlessly as I face the unknown future
with him, how can I yet leave the Dad and my boy without a twinge of
keenest pain? I have kept up bravely until now, have wished every
one good-by with ready smiles, but now that it comes to those two my
eyes are dim, my voice falters. Have I not lived all the years of my
life with my father? have not we shared our cares and loved each
other with the heartiest love wherewith a father and child can love?
Never has one of us harbored an unkind thought of the other, never
has a cross word passed his lips to me, nor a petulant one mine to
him. And our boy, whom we have loved with all our hearts, whom our
tears and prayers have brought back from the doors of death! How can
I leave these two without emotion? I can _not_. Tears blind my
eyes, sobs choke my throat, as I throw my arms first round one then
the other; and their eyes, too, though with manly shame they try hard
to smile, their eyes are dim, their dear voices that bid me such
hearty "God speed" quiver and tremble; and I, the happiest, proudest
woman in England, am helped into the carriage by the man I love with
all my heart, in floods of tears as though I were the saddest,
unwillingest bride in the world.
"Little darling," whispers my handsome husband, as we drive away,--he
always calls me thus; he does not like my name,--"you shall never
have any cause for tears that I can prevent, I swear. Look at me;
tell me you are not afraid to trust the future with me."
I look into his deep-blue eyes and smile through my tears. If but
half of the great love and confidence I have in him is written in
mine, he must needs be content with what he reads.
I think he is.