TO ITALY.
“I did not think Diana had been such a fool,” was the remark of Mrs.
Hunstanton, when the arrangement was proposed to her. She made no
objection to the joint journey. The invalid boy for whom they travelled,
and in whom all her hopes were concentrated, was on the whole a
fatiguing companion, dear as he was both to father and mother; and as
Mrs. Norton was one of the women who are utterly beyond fatigue in the
amusement of children, there was compensation for the risk of being
bored by the helplessness of the two little women. But that Miss
Trelawny should carry her “infatuation” about these trifling persons to
the length of sending them off like an anxious mother because the girl
had a cough, filled her with an angry surprise. If she had a cough, what
had Diana to do with it? She had an aunt of her own to look after her,
and they had, Mrs. Hunstanton supposed, enough to live on, or what
business had they there at Diana’s table meeting the best people in the
county? Her unaccountable fondness for them irritated her friend. What
could she see in such commonplace persons? for indeed the mixture of
amusement and habit and indulgence in Diana’s affection was
incomprehensible to Mrs. Hunstanton, who either was fond of people or
disliked them, and disapproved of such complications of feeling. To tell
the truth, the Nortons themselves took Diana’s kindness as proof of a
deep and absorbing love, and asked each other, with a gentle
complacency, what they had done to make her so fond of them. “Not that I
should wonder at _any one_ being fond of you, my darling,” the aunt
said; a sentiment which the niece echoed warmly, both putting Diana’s
love down to the credit of the other. Diana herself smiled a little when
they talked to her of her love. Yes; she supposed she was fond of them
in a way, poor little souls! and she laughed at the indignation of Mrs.
Hunstanton, which was so _naïve_ and open. It was no harm to that good
woman, did not take anything from her, that her friend should pet and
spoil these little women. Still it irritated her; and to think of this
extravagant indulgence of their weaknesses angered her almost beyond
bearing. “As for their coming with us, they are welcome to come, I am
sure,” she said, thinking, not without a little relief, of Reginald, who
was “a handful” on a long journey. She saw in her mind’s eye Mrs. Norton
devoting herself to the boy, petting him--for it was her nature to be
always petting somebody--reading to him, finding out endless stores of
conundrums and foolish games for his amusement; and she was mollified.
It was possible even that, though of themselves bores, they might be a
kind of acquisition on the journey; but what Diana could mean by it!
Mrs. Hunstanton shrugged her shoulders, and made up her mind that human
creatures in general were more inscrutable than any other mystery on the
face of the earth. She had occasion to learn this truth nearer home.
There was her own husband always dancing about on somebody’s business,
meddling with somebody’s affairs. No such temptation disturbed her mind.
She was interested about her own people, loved them, and would have
spent her last sixpence and her last hour in serving them. But people
who did not belong to you! What right had you to be disturbed and
deranged by their affairs?
Nevertheless, notwithstanding Mrs. Hunstanton’s objections to the whole
business, she took a good deal of trouble that evening in enlightening
the inexperienced travellers, who had a thousand questions to ask.
“When I was at Geneva, there was a light kind of challis which I wore--a
kind of dust-colour--with flowers upon it,” said Mrs. Norton.
“Oh, not dust-colour, dear auntie; let it be grey,” said Sophy.
They were all in a flutter of expectation and excitement, eager to be
told if new outfits were necessary, and a total change of raiment, as if
they had been going to India. For Mrs. Norton, with no rent to pay, was
rich enough to indulge Sophy with several new dresses if necessary, and
would have liked the business. Mrs. Hunstanton cut them very short. “I
hope you don’t think you are going to eternal summer,” she said.
“No, indeed--until we get away from this sad world altogether, Mrs.
Hunstanton.”
Sophy had no desire to escape from this sad world. She said, “But it is
much warmer. It is to take away my cough; and Reginald--of course
Reginald goes for the warm weather?”
“Equable, equable. We don’t jump up and down the thermometer as we do at
home. And the place is very dull. You can’t think how dull it is--high
houses: if you live on the second floor--and unless you are rich you
must live on the second, or even the third floor--you can’t even see the
street. As for a glimmer of sunshine, that is past praying for, if you
happen to be on the wrong side. And no society, or next to none. The
Italians are very exclusive; and the English--well, the less said about
the English the better,” said Mrs. Hunstanton, in her serious vein.
The two little ladies looked at each other. Tears sprang to Sophy’s
eyes, who was the one most easily moved. “We must go now,” she said, “to
please Diana.” And then, after a pause, “Diana is so kind. Perhaps she
is too kind, auntie. If it had not been all settled for us--you know
there are other places which are not dull.”
“And ungrateful, too!” Mrs. Hunstanton said to herself; but she said
nothing more about the dulness of Pisa. She gave them some small
instructions, which restored their cheerfulness; and told them when she
meant to start. And though they were damped, their courage rose after
the interview was over. “If it was as bad as she says, who would wish to
go there?” said Mrs. Norton, with unusual shrewdness. “They are going
themselves, so we must have some society. Depend upon it, dear, Diana
would not send you if she were not sure it was for your good.”
Sophy, who had no doubt on this subject, accepted the assurance very
sweetly; and Mr. Hunstanton, who met them on the road, gave them much
greater encouragement. They had come out next day in Diana’s own
pony-carriage, which neither of them had courage to drive, and they met
him on the road, trudging along in his gaiters. “My wife would not give
you much advice,” he said; “you should have come to me. Take alpaca and
that sort of thing, Mrs. Norton. Don’t you call it alpaca? or merino, is
it? Not too thin, nor yet too thick. You will enjoy it very much. None
of those blighting colds we have here, but an equable, pleasant
temperature. You can always go out every day, and a little pleasant
society always at your command. We know people everywhere; and, of
course, wherever we are, after knowing you so intimately as Diana’s
friends, and all that, there will be a corner for you.”
“Sophy,” said Mrs. Norton, with enthusiasm, when he had passed on,
“Diana may say what she pleases, and I know she is cleverer than you and
I; but for real understanding there is nothing like a gentleman! They
know how to convey information, and they are so genuine. Now, ladies are
always jealous. It must be jealousy. What a different account he gave!
Mr. Hunstanton is a very nice man, and he understands what is due to
people in our position. It will be a great advantage to be near them:
for whatever Mrs. Hunstanton may say, of course they must have some
society. Besides, my love,” added Mrs. Norton, “the great thing is your
health. We can bear anything if your cough goes.”
“I think it is better since Thursday,” said Sophy. Thursday was the day
of Diana’s visit, when this great step was decided upon.
“I think so too,” said the aunt. “You know how one’s toothache goes away
when one knocks at the dentist’s door.”
This was perhaps not a very flattering simile: but that Sophy’s cough
did improve immediately was very apparent. Diana from the great house
looked on at the movements in the little one with that amused
observation which Mrs. Hunstanton could not understand. That Sophy’s
cough was better, that Mrs. Norton was no longer frightened to expose
her niece to the cold winds, and even bore with equanimity Sophy’s
adoption of the “short cut” across the park, which would have alarmed
both of them a few weeks before, and that Mrs. Norton herself had no
neuralgia when she drove out and in to Ireton to do the shopping which
she found inevitable,--all this was very apparent to Diana. Mrs.
Hunstanton, and even Miss Trelawny’s maid, remarked these circumstances
with wrath, and the former hotly declared it to be utter cynicism and
disbelief in human nature which made Diana laugh, and go on petting the
little humbugs as much as ever. Is there always perhaps a little
cynicism mingled with the toleration of the larger nature? Diana
protested against it warmly, and felt herself injured by the imputation.
She did not expect so much as the others did. It pleased herself to be
kind and liberal to them. She did not want gratitude. Thus one part of
the world will argue for ever, while another part receives the favours
given and feels itself relieved from obligation by that very argument;
and a third, incapable either of the generosity or the ingratitude,
stands by and grows wroth and criticises. After all, it is the givers
who have the best of it, though they have all the loss and the largest
share of the pain,--which is a paradox, as most things that concern this
paradoxical human nature must be.
The travellers went away, and Diana was left alone. Even in the heyday
of health and life this is seldom desirable. She was alone in the world.
So fortunate, so happy, so capable a woman, with “everything that heart
could desire,” did her prosperity, her wealth and power, and beautiful
surroundings do much for her? I think they did ameliorate her lot to an
almost incalculable extent. Shut up in a limited space, in sordid
circumstances, poor, with nothing to occupy her active faculties, she
would have been like a caged lion. But she had abundance to
do--occupations important and valuable and necessary, not the things
done for the mere sake occupation which are the lot of so many women,
and indeed also of many men. The work of the estate, taken up for the
first time for many generations with genuine enthusiasm, exercised all
her powers; and as she had the advantage over most reformers of being
able actually to execute a great many of the reforms she had planned,
her work kept her going as perhaps no other work could have done. A
reforming despot, eager to set everything right, and really able in many
cases to enact the part of Providence, redress wrongs, and do poetic
justice among men,--what position could be more sustaining and
encouraging to a vigorous and fanciful soul? Diana’s “work” occupied her
like a profession. She was rich, for what use but the good of others?
The most extravagant expenditure possible to herself personally, she
thought, could not amount to half of her income--though she loved to
have beautiful things about her, and to spend liberally with the
generous habit of her nature. She never meant to marry, she never meant
to save. The next Trelawny who should succeed her would find an
unencumbered estate, and an improved one, please God, but hoards of
money none. This was the intention of her life. You may believe, if you
please, that some disgust of youth with the ordinary arrangements of
humanity, some horror of false love, or unforgotten outrage of the
heart, was at the bottom of the system upon which she had formed her
future existence. But whatever this was, she had surmounted the pain of
it, and her imagination had been caught by that ideal of the virgin
princess, which had something captivating in it, though it is rarely
recognised by the world. Then she had herself been poor, and knew how to
give succour and who needed it.
But she kept the family lawyers of the Trelawny house, I allow, in a
state of fever and exasperation very prejudicial to the health of these
respectable gentlemen. They thought her mad, no less, when she proposed
to them to give large slices of her income to this one and the
other--not “the poor,” in the ordinary sense of the word. Subscriptions
to hospitals, to orphanages, to charities in general, that they
understood; but a civil list of pensions like the Queen’s--sometimes
more liberal than her Majesty is permitted to give! “The young woman is
mad!” said Mr. Seign and Mr. Cachet. But it was in favour of Diana’s
sanity that she had her dresses from Paris, and drove a beautiful pair
of horses, and bought pictures, and saw a great deal of society. Her
conservatories were the pride of the county; her head gardener a man of
such erudition that professors quailed before him. This did not look
like insanity; neither did the great Christmas party which gathered in
the Chase, when Mr. Cachet was one of the guests, and was forced to
acknowledge that things had not been carried on with anything like so
much splendour in old Sir John’s time. She was not a hermit nor an
anchorite nor a monomaniac. As for her resolution not to marry, of
course that meant solely that she had not yet been addressed by the
right man; and when he appeared, no doubt he would make short work with
the civil list. This calmed the tone of Messrs. Seign & Cachet’s
remonstrances. They protested on principle against any new
“eccentricity” of the feminine Squire of Trelawny; but they trusted in
time and the chapter of accidents, and Diana’s beauty and her youth--for
naturally when she has a large property, however it may be under other
circumstances, a woman of thirty has by no means ceased to be young.
Thus Diana occupied herself through the dulness of the winter; but when
spring began to thrill nature with its first touches through the gloom
her energy flagged. There was no one with her. Were I to say that these
two silly little women in the Red House had been “company” for Diana it
would be folly; and yet she missed them and their chatter and their soft
voices. How much domestic comfort there is in pleasant looks and smiles
and soft tones, even when unaccompanied by high qualities! They had gone
away without thinking much of her who was so much their superior,
accepting her favours with light hearts, but quite easy in the thought
that Diana liked to give. And she, foolish, bigger, nobler creature,
missed them! How absurd it was, yet true! And she missed also the
Hunstantons, her nearest neighbours, and her strength of winter flagged;
and all those imaginations to which “in spring a young man’s fancy
lightly turns” awoke in Diana’s mind--not to thoughts of love, but to
those unnamed and unnamable disturbances, longings for something other
than what we possess, which are not confined to youth alone. “Folk are
longen to gon on pilgrimages,”--old characteristic of human nature never
changed! Diana got up one morning with a sudden thought in her mind.
She, who for these last two years had been helping all sorts of people
to all sorts of pleasure, she had never been anywhere herself, except
in the last months of old Lady Trelawny’s life, when she went to Cannes
with her in an invalid pursuit of the warmth and sunshine. She made up
her mind all at once to go to Italy too.
I don’t know whether it was fortunate or unfortunate for her, but it was
the fact that her first rapid glance round all her horizon to try to
remember if she knew any one who would like to be taken there with
her--came to nothing. If she chose to go she must make up her mind to go
for herself. Well, she said after an interval, why not go for myself?
There was nothing unlawful in it, no more than in getting dresses from
Paris, which she did without hesitation. Therefore, accordingly, with
her usual rapidity, having placed everything on a safe footing that none
of her enterprises might be arrested, Diana set off. She sent no warning
letters before her. Perhaps this was rash: but it was not as if she
expected any special warmth of welcome. She knew exactly how she would
be received by all her friends,--how Sophy and her aunt would flutter
about her; how Mrs. Hunstanton would raise her eyebrows, and proceed to
immediate but probably silent speculations as to what had brought her;
how Mr. Hunstanton would claim her interest in the histories of all his
friends; even how sickly Reginald would inspect her to see what she had
brought him. All this Diana knew beforehand. She went rapidly across the
sea and land on the last wild days of March, and found herself whirled
through the Tuscan plain among the almond-trees in the beginning of
April. What a flush there was everywhere about of those almond-trees,
useful and meant for fruiting, not kept merely to be the earliest
ornaments of the garden, like ours! She seemed to be wandering through
the backgrounds of all the Italian pictures she knew, seeing the soft
evening light strike upon the little cones of hills, the old castles and
convents. Was this the Val d’Arno, the country of dreams, and were these
the Apennines? There was a vague elation, a sense of wondering joyous
unreality, in the very names.
The Hunstantons “knew themselves” in all these places which are
frequented by invalids, and knew where to go. They were established in
an old palace on the sunny side of the river. There they had saved wood
and kept themselves warm all the winter, and now began to talk of the
risks of too much heat and the necessity of closing the _persianis_.
Reginald was better, and as for Sophy’s cough, no one had heard it since
she left England. It had been cured too soon; but only Mrs. Hunstanton
recollected this fact, or ever had mentioned it. The Hunstantons had the
second floor of the palace, being economical people; the Nortons had a
little _appartemento_ above. They lived separately, yet together; and
Reginald had been so much happier with the Nortons to fall back upon, to
find out conundrums for him, and play games with him, and fill up his
idle moments, that his mother had forgotten all her objections to her
fellow-travellers. Reginald was her very dear son, but he was not an
interesting boy. Sometimes even fathers and mothers are conscious of
this fact, but kind little Mrs. Norton was quite unconscious of it. “I
do really believe that Diana, who thinks of everything, saw what an
advantage it would be for Reginald, and that she sent them for that, as
much as for Sophy’s ridiculous little pretence of a cough,” Mrs.
Hunstanton had been saying on the very evening of Diana’s arrival. This
was when she and her husband were alone after dinner on one of their
“off-nights.” On alternate evenings they held small receptions,--little
gossiping friendly parties which were not parties, and to which the
English--of whom this lady had said that the less said of them the
better--constantly came. One stranger only interfered on this evening
with the conjugal _tête-à-tête_. He was an Italian--a Florentine--of
the great house of the Pandolfini, but not a wealthy scion of the race.
“Yes; Sophy is an unselfish little thing. I always told you so. She
likes to be of use.”
“I observe,” said Pandolfini, who bore the title of Cavaliere, but was
invariably addressed, according to Italian use and wont, by his
Christian name. He spoke good but formal English, avoiding the
contractions with which we break the solemnity of our speech. “I observe
that it is the epithet for the young lady--unselfish. All the English
say so. Is there not, then, another epithet which will mean something
more large, more fine?”
“What could be finer than unselfishness?” said Mrs. Hunstanton, raising
her eyebrows. “Mind, _I_ don’t apply it as so many people do; and I was
not talking of Sophy, whose chief claim is that she is young and pretty,
but of her aunt: or rather, indeed, of Diana.”
“Ah, Diana!” said her husband; “that is a different thing altogether.”
“And who, then, is Diana?” said Pandolfini, smiling. He had heard the
name a great many times; but that any one should be ignorant who Diana
was seemed so unlikely to the little party, that the Italian, though a
constant visitor, knew nothing of her but her name.
“Oh, Diana! Why, you know she---- Who is that, my dear, at the door? We
don’t expect any one, do we, to-night?”
“_I_ don’t expect any one--unless you have forgotten what night it was,
as I’ve known you to do, and asked somebody----”
“Why, why!” said Mr. Hunstanton--“God bless me! listen: if I did not
know she was safe in England I should say that voice---- My dear!--why,
it is! Diana, her very self!”
The Italian stood behind backs, smiling and looking on. The room was
large and but partially lighted, with frescoes on the walls shining out
here and there where there was light enough to see them. He saw a lady
come in against one of these illuminated bits of wall, relieved against
a mass of dark-crimson drapery, holding out her hands. She was in black,
with a lace veil wound about her head. The smile faded off his face as
he stood and gazed. He had been thinking of Sophy’s type of English
womankind, which was what he had seen most, with that same amused,
indulgent, kind semi-contempt which had been in Diana’s mind. But here
he was stopped suddenly short. The beautiful face which met his look
without being aware of it was pale, partly by nature, partly by fatigue.
Her hair was dark, shining with a soft gloss, yet ruffled over her
forehead by a tendency to curl which had often disturbed Diana: her eyes
of that lustrous and dewy grey which is so rare: her face as perfect in
its somewhat long oval as if it had been painted by Luini, but not weak
as Luini’s faces sometimes are. She stood smiling, putting out her
hands, which looked like snow through the cloud of drooping lace. “Yes,
it is Diana--the last person in the world you expected to see!” she
said.
Pandolfini felt the words echo down to the very bottom of his heart.
Surely the very last person in the world he had expected to see,--such a
woman as he had been looking for all his life! Fortunately he was in the
shade, and she was occupied with her friends and the welcome they gave;
and though she saw there was a stranger present, could not see, and
therefore could not be offended by, his gaze. And an Italian can gaze at
a woman without impertinence as a man of no other nation can. If she is
beautiful, is it not the homage he owes her? and if she is not
beautiful, it is kind to make her think so--to give the admiration due
to her sex, if not to her. Presently, however, he awoke to the
recollection that English susceptibilities were sometimes shocked by
this simple homage. He did not go away as an Englishman would have
done, but he went to one of the distant windows, and, half hidden in the
curtains, looked on still while they put her in a chair, discharging
volleys of questions--while they offered her everything, dinner, tea,
wine, all that a traveller might be supposed to require, and she replied
with soft laughter and explanations, declaring herself fully refreshed
and rested. Then there was a flutter and a rush, and the two little
ladies from the third floor came rushing in, called by Reginald, and
blotted out the beautiful new-comer with their embracings. When the
party remembered him at last, and brought him out of the shadow and
presented him to the stranger, Pandolfini, much against his will, had to
go away. Not even his Italian simplicity was proof against the little
chill that came over the English group as he was brought (of course by
good Mr. Hunstanton’s officious kindness) into the midst of it. “I must
not disturb the happiness of the re-seeing,” he said in his formal
English, carefully pronouncing every syllable. Sophy had been sent by
her aunt to fetch something as he got his hat in the anteroom, and
lingered a moment in the great gloomy staircase, lighted only by the
little coiled taper she carried, and by the lamp of the servant who
stood ready to show him the way down that dark cavern of stairs. It
made a curious picture,--the light all centring in Sophy’s whiteness,
her muslin dress, and the flower face that bloomed over it in all the
English glory of complexion. She lingered to say good-night to him,
putting out her soft little hand. “You are happy to-night?” he said,
looking at her with that kind smile. “How can I help it?” cried Sophy,
but with a curious wistful look in her eyes; “Diana has come.” Then she
ran with a thrill and vibration of light and brightness up into the
dark, carrying her taper, and he more heavily went down to the night and
the outside world.
Diana has come! He kept saying it to himself all the way back to his
lodging, trying to harden the soft syllables in the English way--then
melting, softening over them, taking them back to his own tongue. The
moon was large in the sky, stooping out of the blue, wondering at
him--she, too, who was Diana. He laughed to himself softly, and
then--strange!--felt his eyes full of tears. Why, in the name of every
sylvan goddess?--because an English lady whom he had never seen before
had suddenly appeared in the big, dim, painted room, where her
country-people were staying--the most natural of incidents. What could
he do but laugh at himself thus suddenly startled into--sentiment. Yes,
that was the word--a foolish word, meaning a foolish thing. But why that
filling of the eyes? He was an Anglo-maniac, and it vexed him to feel
how southern he was, how unrestrained, overcome in that foolish Italian
way by feeling. An Englishman would not have been capable of these
absurd tears. And as he pursued his way in the moonlight all the length
of the Lung’ Arno the bells began to strike their prolonged Italian
twenty-two hours, for it was ten o’clock: and every chime all over the
city (for need I say every clock was a little behind its brother?),
prolonging the twenty-two into half a hundred, struck out the same sound
that was in his heart: Di--ana--Diana--Diana! She had come--she whom no
one had heard of till to-day.