had suddenly grown sentimental. "The dear child. To think of her in
her wedding-dress, so soon to be a bride!"
"Well, that's a commonplace enough event! Girls like Meryl usually do
become brides, and later on they wear shrouds, and have a nice little
coffin all to themselves. There really isn't very much difference!..."
"O, my dear!... What a dreadful remark to make! I am sure it is
unlucky to speak like that."
"Then I hope it will be unlucky enough to postpone the wedding
indefinitely."
Aunt Emily turned and looked at her niece as if she thought she had
taken leave of her senses, but that was not by any means a new
expression upon the face of Henry Pym's sister confronting Henry Pym's
niece.
"Really, Diana!..." she expostulated. "I think it is hardly a subject
for jesting. Marriage is a very serious thing. I hope God will bless
dear Meryl with great happiness. I confess, at first, I was
disappointed that she chose a Dutch husband; but Mr. van Hert has very
good Huguenot blood in his veins, and he is undoubtedly a very
charming man; and then, of course, her children will only be half
Dutch."
"Her children ought to be bear cubs!" snapped Diana, wishing her aunt
would go away and leave her to read her letter in peace.
For a moment Aunt Emily was too horrified to reply, and then Diana
added, "Don't trouble to expostulate any more. I'm not really mad,
only eccentric. I never could see why people make such a silly fuss
about weddings; anyhow, they are all the same and all commonplace.
When I marry, I shall give all my friends the shock of their lives,
something to talk about for a year, and then for once in my life I
shall be a public benefactor. I see Helen looking about on the terrace
as if she wanted you. Shall I ask her?..."
"No, I will go in to her"; and she got up and walked towards the
house, still wearing a shocked expression.
"I wonder if Helen will have the sense to manufacture some request?"
thought Diana, glancing after her. "As if I could see the terrace from
here!..."
Then she opened her letter.
When she had read it through once, she turned back to the beginning
and read it through again. And all the time she was so rigidly still,
that a little bird hopped close up to her foot to investigate.
Then she laid the letter down and looked out across the garden. Five
minutes later she got to her feet.
In a moment of crisis Diana was the type who courageously follows an
inspiration, without overmuch weighing and sifting. She had faith in
her own keen woman's instinct and she knew there were times when
sharp, decisive action is better than lengthy, minute attention to all
the laws of war, and far-reaching considerations of what might or
might not result.
A gate at the far end of the garden led out to the main road, and not
very far down was a post office. Diana went straight to it, and sent a
wire, with prepaid reply, directed to Major Carew, which ran:--
"Can you come at once? Urgently wanted. Go to Carlton and send message
on arrival to me.
"DIANA PYM."
XXIX
A USEFUL BLUNDER
The railway journey from Salisbury to Johannesburg takes three and
sometimes four days; so that whether Carew responded to her urgent
message or not, Diana had rather a long time to possess her soul in
patience and make up her mind what course to take next. She was in two
minds whether to take her uncle into her confidence or not, but
decided men were always apt to bungle, and she had better trust
entirely to her own guidance. Beyond a doubt the situation required
the most delicate and skilful handling. First of all, she felt she
must convey to van Hert some suggestion that would prepare him for the
shock of what might be expected to follow upon Carew's arrival,
supposing he came. Meryl she did not worry greatly about. She might be
expected to be swept off her feet and go with the tide, by the very
suddenness of it all. The two men presented the obstacles. Carew would
have to be inveigled with the greatest finesse into an interview with
Meryl, without ever letting him perceive a woman was leading him. In
her heart Diana was a little afraid of the steady, unbending face. He
was not likely to prove pliable; he might even refuse to come. Nothing
she could say could alter the fact that he was a policeman and Meryl
was burdened with a fortune, and that was the only barrier Diana was
aware of. She laughed a little to herself as she wondered whether it
would help matters if Mr. Pym made a will disinheriting Meryl, and
dividing his money between her and charities. She could easily give it
back to Meryl later. Then she sighed. "More heroics!... and they tell
us it is a base world. Here am I driven out of my senses nearly,
positively suffocated with high-mindedness, because three delightful
people can't come down from their unlivable altitude and exhibit a
little practical common sense."
Then, of course, there was van Hert's pride to consider. What in the
world, at this time of all others, was to be made of an English girl
jilting a prominent Dutch politician a week before the wedding day!
"It's almost enough to cause another war!" sighed poor Diana. "I'm
really beginning to wish I had let them all go their own foolish ways.
If I don't mind I shall end in becoming a heroine myself, and that's
really too alarming!..."
However, the bull having been taken by the horns, it was wiser to keep
a firm hold of them; though more than once Diana felt herself very
entirely in sympathy with Mark Twain when he says, "It is better to
take hold by the tail, because then you can let go when you like."
Obviously van Hert must be tackled first, but she waited until the
morning after sending her wire, hoping for a reply. It came early, and
fortune favoured her in that she received her orange-coloured envelope
unknown to anyone. She carried it upstairs and opened it with a
beating, anxious heart. It contained only two words, and was not
signed:--
"Arrive Saturday."
For a moment she felt a little dazed. He was coming then, the stern
soldier-policeman. What in the world was she to say to him?...
Then a flood of gladness began to well up in her heart. After all, it
meant before all things, that a day of great joy might be at hand for
Meryl. Did anything else really matter?... If she personally came
through the transaction a little battered--well, it wouldn't really
matter, if Meryl and The Bear were safely off the rocks. Rather than
let any shadowy good for South Africa come between them now she would
marry van Hert herself, and at that she gave a little low laugh. In
the meantime she had three days to think out a plan and convey to van
Hert some sort of preparation.
When he came that Wednesday evening it was easily seen that he was
feverish. His eyes were unnaturally bright and his face flushed, and
at dinner he only played with his food and ate nothing. He talked and
laughed gaily, but with intermittent shivering which he tried hard to
hide. Everyone saw it, and Meryl grew concerned. He tried to laugh it
off, but was not successful. Finally Mr. Pym advised him to go home to
bed. And then Aunt Emily made the crowning blunder of her life, and
like some other big blunders now historical, it proved a blessing in
disguise.
She glanced at Diana with a scared face and exclaimed in perturbation,
"Now if the wedding is put off it will be your fault, Diana. I told
you it must bring ill-luck to speak about it as you did."
There was an awkward pause, and in spite of herself Diana flushed
scarlet.
"What did Diana say?" van Hert asked of Aunt Emily, half grave and
half casual.
The poor lady, having quickly discovered she had made an unfortunate
remark and become considerably flurried, made matters worse by
stammering guiltily, "O, it was nothing much; she was only talking at
random. She ... she ..."--distressfully discovering van Hert's eyes
still fixed upon her--"said something about hoping the wedding would
be postponed, and I said it was unlucky."
For a moment the constraint was painful. Meryl had grown as white as
the tablecloth, and Mr. Pym looked thoroughly worried. Diana, however,
had quickly recovered herself, and was now the most composed of any.
She gave a little sniff and glanced defiantly at van Hert. His eyes
roved round the table and finally fixed themselves upon hers. She did
not waver, but looked steadily back at him. He gave a self-conscious,
constrained laugh. "I presume you had your reasons?" he said.
She narrowed her eyes a little as she replied with a directness
probably he alone understood, "Yes, I suppose I had. It was yesterday,
Tuesday. Tuesday is often a queer day with me."
And he knew she was referring to their conversation during the
morning's ride.
Then Meryl got up to relieve the tension, and because she began to
feel a little uncertain of herself.
"Di often has queer days, but they have nothing to do with your
feverishness, William. Jackson had better go back with you, and we
will telephone Dr. Smythe to look in and see how you are." She went
away to order the motor, and van Hert seized an opportunity to speak
to Diana unheard.
"I know what you are alluding to," he said, gravely. "We cannot very
well leave it like this. Will you ride the same way to-morrow?"
"But if you have fever?" hesitatingly.
"In the war I fought all day long with fever on me. Surely I can ride!
You will be there?"
"Yes."
When van Hert arrived at the meeting-place next morning, he wore an
overcoat and looked as if he ought to be in bed, and Diana's heart
smote her. But she comforted herself with the thought that his fever
was very much of the mind, and her medicine, if drastic, might still
do him more good than any physician's.
They rode side by side to the seat they had sat upon before, and
without saying much he helped her to alight and gave the reins of both
horses to the black groom.
Once seated, however, he turned to her and said, gravely, "Of course,
that remark of yours had to do with our conversation the last time we
sat here?"
"Of course," agreed Diana, calmly. The intricacies of the task she had
set herself were beginning to interest more than scare her, and she
was not afraid as to her skill in handling van Hert.
"May I ask in what exact particular?"
"Merely that you are the man about to marry a woman you do not love."
He opened his lips to expostulate and deny, but she rested a little
hand on his arm a moment and interrupted. "No, do not trouble to deny
it. I should not have dared to say such a thing without being sure of
my ground. Your face told me on Tuesday."
He was silent, feeling himself unaccountably in the grip of something
he could no longer thwart.
"Now listen to me. When Meryl went to Rhodesia you _did_ love her. I
think she was all the world to you. So she was when she came back, _at
first_. You were in haste to win her, and she consented to be engaged
to you. Afterwards...." She paused.
"Well, afterwards?..." in a strained, unnatural voice.
"Afterwards you found in some vague way she was changed. You had won
her, but you did not possess her. Something had happened. You seemed
to have seized the substance and found it shadow. I seem to be talking
like a book, but we will let that pass! Instead of trying to find out
whether this really was the case, you attempted to hurry forward the
wedding. That, I think, was weak of you."
"And something had happened?..." he asked, hoarsely. "What?..."
Diana spread out her hands with a little French gesture. "It is
sometimes just as poignant to say, '_Cherchez l'homme_' as, '_Cherchez
la femme_.'"
"You mean?..."
"That what had happened was another man."
"Ah!..." in quick surprise; and after a short, tense silence, "Then
why in the world?..." But again she stayed him with a little arresting
hand.
"You wonder why she engaged herself to you?... When you have the clue
it is quite simple. The other man loves her, but he has not told her
so. I do not know that he ever will. He is a proud, obstinate
Englishman, and has no position and no money. Apparently he is ready
to let Meryl wreck her life, rather than bless his with herself and
her fortune. Some men are like that. It is a mixture of pride and
heroics very difficult for a well-meaning cousin like myself to cope
with. I think it may even turn my hair grey yet." Again she spread out
her hands. "Can you not see the rest?... You yourself led up to it.
You urged your united service to South Africa (though why poor South
Africa should be dragged in, I don't know), and she, having as she
thought lost all hope of simple, personal happiness, decided to give
herself to you and to her country. Now do you understand?"
He was silent for a considerable time, thinking deeply; and then, with
one of his quick versatile changes, he turned and pounced upon her
with the question, "Granting all is as you say, what I want to know
is, how have you discovered it?" He looked hard into her face with
keen, searching eyes. "How did _you_ know that _I_ had changed?"
He had taken her a little unawares, and suddenly she felt the hot,
tell-tale blood mounting higher and higher up her face. She moved
restlessly, impatiently, as if his gaze were intolerable, and then
replied a trifle lamely, "You must have heard the English proverb,
'Lookers-on see most of the game.'"
"Ah! I wonder at what particular point you saw first?..."
"In any case it is beside the question," she declared, anxious to get
the conversation away from herself. "As I asked you on Tuesday, I ask
you again, 'What do you think of a man who marries a woman when he
does not love her?'"
"That is not the question you asked me."
"Yes it is," a trifle shortly. Diana was beginning to feel rather like
a swimmer out of his depth.
"I beg your pardon, it is not; but we will let it pass for the moment.
Granting that what you have told me is true, what do you expect me to
do?"
"Tell Meryl the truth."
"And what is the truth?" He was gazing hard at her again, and Diana
began to wish she could run away and hide. She knew that her changing
colour and averted eyes were telling him something he badly wanted to
know.
"O, you're very dense!" she cried, seeking to cover her discomfort.
"Tell her you have discovered it is all a mistake; that you do not
think she loves you better than all the world; and that you feel
yourself wedded to your work, and ... and ... that kind of thing. Of
course it won't be nice, but surely you can see it is a far _braver_
thing to do, than just to go on because you are afraid of what the
world will say?"
"And suppose Meryl wishes to hold to her promise and give herself to
her country?"
"She can still do that, only in some other way."
"And what do you think South Africa will say?"
"O, that's quite beyond me!..." with a little comical grimace, "but,
of course, at any cost, you must avert another war!..." They both
smiled, and she added more seriously, "You can announce that you
discovered in time you were not very well suited to each other, and
mutually agreed to break off the engagement."
Again he was silent for a long time, lost in thought. At last, "And
when do you think I should say this to Meryl?"
"It will not be any easier through waiting. Why not to-night?"
Again he was silent, and something in the air, some secret, veiled
magnetism, told Diana whither his thoughts were tending, and her
cheeks grew hot in spite of herself.
"If I speak to Meryl to-night, and she decrees that the engagement
shall end, will you promise to ride this way to-morrow morning?"
"What for?" trying to speak with nonchalance.
"To answer the question I asked you just now."
"Which question? I have forgotten it."
"I will ask it again to-morrow."
"But why all this mystery?... Ask me now. I will answer it if I can."
"I would rather wait until to-morrow. Come, you have said all you
wanted to say to me. Let me have my turn now." And she knew that his
eyes, sharpened by love, were reading things she had scarcely yet
admitted to herself.
She got up suddenly, feeling a little breathless. She began to have
again that alarming sensation of being mastered; as if he had some
hold upon her, against which it was her instinct to fight, not because
of any antipathy to him, but because, like all women of her
independent character and fearlessness, she dreaded the mere thought
of losing her liberty or yielding her independence. And at the same
time she knew that the thought which held a dread held a charm also.
Diana would never lose her grit and personality, she would never
submit for a moment to any overshadowing, but deep in her heart she
knew she was true woman enough to like to be conquered by the right
man. Her instinct was to contradict van Hert in anything just then and
deny any wish, but she was glad he quietly insisted upon her granting
his request, and that when they finally rode away it was an understood
thing she would come again the next morning.
XXX
DIANA IS RESTLESS
It would be most difficult, indeed well-nigh impossible, for any
chronicler to describe the state of Diana's feelings that afternoon;
and very certain that under no circumstances would she have attempted
to describe them herself. The swift coming into life of the love
between her and van Hert was like the man who said he had not been
born, he just happened. One could imagine Diana calmly stating their
love had no explanation, it just happened. Perhaps it had been there
longer than either of them knew; perhaps it took form suddenly when
each realised the unsubstantial nature of the engagement to Meryl.
Diana had always had a special liking for van Hert, and had said so
openly; but as he had for some time been presented in her mind as her
cousin's lover, there had been no reason why the liking should grow to
anything warmer, and probably it never would have. But when she
thoroughly realised how unsatisfactory a basis he was about to build
his wedded happiness upon, a certain resentment on his behalf took
shape in her mind, as well as troubled anxiety for Meryl. From this it
was not a very far step to a warmer feeling still, and as we have
seen, the old gaieties ceased to attract her if he was not a partaker.
And then, knowing well that Meryl's heart was given elsewhere, she
spent no anxious moments as to whether this warmer feeling of hers
were unfair to her cousin. It was as though it was just held in
abeyance waiting for something to happen; and when the something had
happened, she swam out fearlessly into the deep water. With van Hert
it had necessarily been different. He knew nothing of Carew, and only
felt vaguely that Meryl had changed; nothing tangible that he could
take hold of, and yet a something that was as an invisible barrier
between their closer knowledge of each other. Puzzled and baffled, he
turned with eagerness to Diana's frank camaraderie, to awake suddenly
one evening to the fact that, unknown to him, his heart had slipped
out of his and Meryl's keeping into hers. Yet even then he tried to
deny the change even to himself; he would not believe he could so
suddenly transfer his affection. It was not until later, seeing the
whole from the vantage-ground of distance, that he realised his
affections had not been transferred. His affection for Meryl still
existed; he admired her profoundly as before. What had died was his
desire, starved by the growing sense that she chiefly suffered his
caress. But he had not the moral courage to go to her frankly and tell
her this; and rather than face the consequences he attempted to stifle
this strong longing for Diana and put himself beyond the reach of it.
Fortunately for all three, that practical common sense of Diana's,
which she was pleased to call selfish commonplaceness, dared swift,
unconventional measures, careless of consequences, rather than to sit
still and let the mistake pass beyond recall.
But at the beginning she had not given much thought to her own
personal feelings in the matter, and it was only after the ride with
van Hert she found these suddenly confronting her in their full
significance. And because the turn of events was becoming a little
overwhelming, she spent the hours between parting with him and his
coming interview with Meryl in a whirl of emotion wholly new to her.
Once or twice Meryl asked her if anything was the matter, she was so
extraordinarily restless, but she only laughed it off and tried to
steady her feelings.
In the evening, when they left the dinner-table after dessert, she
mysteriously vanished; but later, swept with an inexplicable wave of
longing and uncertain dread, she crept down to the dining-room to try
and discover what had happened. It was growing in her consciousness
with illuminating clearness that her own happiness depended upon what
decision Meryl made.
At last there was a movement in the drawing-room as of someone
stepping in from the verandah, and she waited breathlessly for a
glimpse of Meryl's face. She and van Hert came out into the hall
together, and Diana saw that her cousin looked extraordinarily frail
and white and rather exhausted. Van Hert was very gentle to her.
"Shall I see your father to-night?" he asked, and she answered, "No, I
will tell him myself. I expect he will see you to-morrow."
"Good night," and Meryl held out her hand.
Diana saw him hesitate; and then, with a movement that had in it the
graceful courtesy of the Huguenot and the reverence of a fine spirit,
he bent very low before her and kissed her hand. Afterwards he went
quietly away, and Meryl stood alone in the hall. For one moment she
waited, as if listening to his departing footsteps, and then very
slowly turned and walked to her father's study.
Diana slipped out and went upstairs, but presently her restlessness
again caused her to descend. She could not settle to anything until
she knew the truth and how Meryl took it. Thus she was again in the
dining-room when the study door opened and Meryl came out. Her father
came with her to the threshold, and it was evident that she had been
crying. Diana saw her raise a white, tear-stained face, and saw Henry
Pym kiss his child with ineffable tenderness. Then Meryl went slowly
upstairs, and Mr. Pym went back into his study and closed the door.
But something in his face, at her last glimpse of it, went swiftly to
Diana's loyal, devoted heart; and because she loved him as if he were
her own father, an impulse carried her straight across the hall with
noiseless feet to the study door. Without knocking, she opened it
softly and crept in. Henry Pym was seated at his writing-table, with
his face hidden in his hand; and she saw, perhaps more poignantly than
ever before, how the last few weeks had whitened his hair.
As she softly closed the door and crossed the room he looked up. Diana
warm-hearted to a degree when she deeply loved, slipped on to her
knees beside him, and taking the hand hanging limply at his side in
both hers, raised it to her lips.
Henry Pym looked down into her eyes, and for the first time guessed
from whence the solution had come.
"You saved her?..." he said a little huskily.
Diana nestled up against him. "I saved _them_," she corrected. "Van
Hert is a fine man; he deserves a wife who gives him her whole heart,
just as truly as Meryl deserves a husband who has no thought for
anyone else in the world."
"Then you knew he cared for someone else?"
"Did he tell her so?" She lowered her head that he might not see her
face.
"Yes."
"Did he say whom?"
"I do not know."
"Perhaps Meryl knew?"
"She did not say."
She kissed his hand again, and asked in low tones, "Why was she crying
when she came out of the study? She ... she ... is not sorry about
things?..."
"No; she is glad. She sees she made a mistake."
"Then why was she crying?"
She saw him flinch, and read in his face all the pain in his heart.
Evidently he knew of that hidden sorrow shadowing his child's life;
evidently her sorrow was his sorrow. The wedding he so dreaded was
safely prevented, but would the happiness come back?... the happiness
that had been in that household before they went to Rhodesia? Could
all his love and hope and tenderness bring back joy to the eyes that
were his heaven and his earth?
"Dearie," murmured Diana again, "was she crying because of that big
soldier-policeman up north?"
He did not reply, and suddenly she knelt upright, and took his sad,
careworn face in her hands and nestled her soft cheek against it.
"Because he's coming on Saturday, dearie. Hush! don't breathe a word;
it is my secret; only I had to tell you because of what I saw in your
face just now. He is coming because he loves her."