[_Note_.--An ingenious etymologist supplies a likely derivation for
the “duck-stone,” so often mentioned in the text, from the Slavic
_dook_ or _duk_, signifying to spirit away. Accepting this genesis,
the duck-stone, given to Mrs. Please by the gypsy, becomes the _dook_,
or _bewitching_-stone, and is imbued with whatever virtues our faith
or our credulity may suggest.]
THE EXTRAORDINARY
CONFESSIONS OF DIANA PLEASE[1]
I.
I MAKE MY DÉBUT
At my friend M. de C----’s instigation I sit down in the noon of my
life to talk of its morning.
I look first to your gallantry, my dear Alcide, to see that this
statement is not misconstrued. That I have a past argues nothing of my
remoteness from it. In comparison with the immortality which is surely
to be mine, everything on this side is youth. I am seventeen, or
thirty-seven, or whatever I choose; and I intend that Heaven, whenever
it calls me, shall find me irresistible. Possessing all the ages, it
cannot grudge me my arbitrary disposition of my own little term.
Now, tell your friends, my dear Alcide, that to succeed in life one
must never ask a woman her age or a man his intentions; and so we
shall all be comfortable.
I owe my mother the most whimsical of grudges, my existence. I will
nickname her the Comtesse de l’Ombre, and so shall abuse no
confidences in relating of my debt to her, and to “Lovelace,” her
collaborator in the romance of which I am the heroine. She was very
beautiful; and he, an English cadet of distinction, was an
aristocratic paragon.
At the age of sixteen, convinced of the hollowness of life, she had
taken the veil, and become the Sister Agnès of the Communauté de
Madelonnettes, Notre Dame de la Charité, in Paris, whence a year
later she was transferred to an English branch of the house. Hence and
from her duty my father, whom she had approached upon a begging
mission, succeeded unhappily in inveigling her.
To the day of her death my mother bore the disfiguring sign of a
little cross on her breast. It has succeeded to me, but in a faint
reflection, a _grain de beauté_, only. I will tell you, in a word,
the story of my inheritance.
The ladies of les Madelonnettes had, in inviting all the feminine
vices to their inauguration ceremony, with the object to pension them
off handsomely, overlooked the bad fairy Jealousy. Thou knowest,
Alcide, the meanness of this witch. To revenge herself, she cast
Lovelace into their midst, as Eris cast the apple of discord upon the
nuptial board of Thetis; and poor de l’Ombre was made the consequent
scapegoat. Driven forth in ignominy from the fold, she could not
suffer so much but that one, over zealous or jealous, must strike her
an envious blow across the bosom, on which she always wore a little
crucifix, the gift of her father. The ebony cut in and left an
indelible scar, to which I was to succeed in pathetic earnest of my
origin. It has never ceased to be a symbol to me of the vanity of
self-renunciation. How can we deny our_selves_, and not deny One after
whose image we are made?
I was born in a lodging at Brighthelmston, whither my father had
conveyed my mother. The town, which has always possessed an attraction
for me, was at that time a very paltry affair of scattered houses, to
which the mumpish or melancholic came periodically to salt their
spleens against a fresh course of dissipations. Locality has never,
however, influenced my temper. The perfume of contentment breathes
from within, and is not to be affected by soil or surroundings. Let us
who have good constitutions continue, as the way is, to accept them
for virtues, and to abhor the dyspeptic as unclean. Let us have the
discretion to ask no questions of our neighbours about what we don’t
understand in this entertaining comedy of life. So shall we justify
ourselves to ourselves, and avoid being made uncomfortable. Is it not
so, my friend?
My mother had never, I do believe, had a doll till I came. She was
very young, even then, and could not tire of playing with me in our
pretty cottage near the Steine. And I responded in all endearing
gaiety and innocence, with the very trustfulness of which she must, I
fear, have come to reproach her apostasy.
Maybe she did, for, as time went on, I can recall a cloud settling
upon her brow--the shadow, perhaps, of the yoke under which she was
passing from girlhood to womanhood. I was already four _when she came
of age_. O, _mon chéri_! think of the tragedy of those italics! And
think of me, a child of a precocious observation, and little ears as
pinkly susceptible to murmurs as the inside of a shell, doomed to
wake--wake to some misty understanding of the unusual in our
relations!
By and by I even confided my suspicions to my father, whom I adored,
and who visited us occasionally, coming down from town very elegant
and _mondain_ and in great company. He laughed, and then frowned over
at mamma, who returned his look steadily.
“Dear sir,” she said only, “the child is growing very critical. Do not
encourage her, and make this cross harder than I can bear.”
“But I too have a cross,” I said; “only it is little and faint, and
not blushing like _maman’s_.”
My papa laughed again, and again frowned, saying, “It is a fact, and
hard on the infant, who has done nothing to deserve it.”
Then he pushed me from him, and rose, and, going to the door, turned
at it with a peevish face.
“I weary of these heroics,” said he. “If you persist in them, remember
that you are qualified, more than ever, for les Madelonnettes.”
He went; and she cried out, as if over some dreadful awakening. But
thenceforth, for some reason, our confidences grew estranged. I loved
my poor mamma so well, that I think she should not have responded by
striving to make heir to her melancholy the innocent cause of it. At
the root of all our moral revolt is a sense of the injustice of
original sin. I, at least, had done nothing to make me unhappy.
Presently I was given a governess, my dear careless father’s nominee.
She was French, a _ci-devant maîtresse de pension_, very lazy and
self-indulgent, and, if not sleeping, she was always ogling for
unattached beaux. Vicious and insolent, she delighted in prompting me
to reflections on my mother’s self-reserve, and “honour” was as much
in her mouth as false teeth. I learned nothing from her but indecorum
and innuendo.
One day--for the moral to her teaching (it was when I was ten years
old)--I was playing truant on the downs, when I saw a small smutty
baby crawl from under a bush into the road at the very moment that a
carriage, wildly driven, was approaching. I had just time to notice
the gilded splendour of the equipage, and, perhaps,--let us be frank,
my friend,--to be inspired to heroism by the sight, before I leapt and
snatched up the child from under the very feet of the galloping
horses. As the chariot thundered by, an elegantly groomed head thrust
itself from the window, and a ruffled hand, waving to me standing
there unhurt but bewildered, flung back a gold coin into the dust. I
turned my back immediately, disillusioned, by the insolence of the
acknowledgment, as to the disinterested quality of my deed, and the
more so as the baby was, _parler franchement_, decidedly unpleasant. I
put the imp down, and began to re-order my little ruffled plumes.
Wouldst thou hear what they were, my Alcide? I can recall them at this
hour: A dainty gipsy hat knotted to a blue ribbon; a stomacher laced
over with silver twist, and a skirt to the ankles, both of flowered
lustring; three pair of ruffles at my bare elbows; a black solitaire
at my neck, and black shoes with red heels and the prettiest of paste
buckles.
Alas! how better than our sins of yesterday do we remember the
stockings we wore to sin in! Let me, for penance, concede to history
these my failings. I was, in fact, colourless in complexion, like
tinted porcelain, with what my detractors used to call spun-glass
hair, and the eyes of a Dresden shepherdess. And I was not at that
time light on my feet, with which my volatile spirits were always at
odds.
Now, as I smoothed my skirt, I was aware of a mad gipsy woman hurrying
from the bank towards me, and crying and gesticulating as she came.
She caught up the infant, and, finding it unharmed, put it down again,
and fawned upon me inarticulate. Then she broke off to curse the
distant carriage up hill and down, and finally went to pick up the
coin from the very spot where she had not failed to mark its fall.
“It is yours,” she said, striding back to me. “Take it!”
“You can keep it,” I answered, with my little nose in the air. “A lady
does not want for money.”
She slipped it into her pocket, and fell on her knees before me.
“Nor beauty, nor love, nor silken raiment,” she cried; “and yet they
are not all. Think, my darling! There be no need so wild but the poor
grateful gipsy may show a way to gratify it.”
I laughed, half annoyed and half frightened; and then, suddenly and
oddly, there came into my head the thought of the stocking needle the
_gouvernante_ was wont to stick into my bosom at meals, to prevent me
stooping and rounding my back. Must I confess, my Alcide, that there
was ever a time when thy Diane was a little less or more than a sylph?
“Make me light,” I said, “so that I can dance without feeling the
ground.”
She looked at me strangely a moment, then all about her in a stealthy
way, while she slipped her hand into her pocket.
“Hush!” she said. “For none other but you. Only tell not of it.” And
she brought up a little greasy packet, of parchment writ round with
characters, like a Hebrew phylactery.
“Have you ever heard tell of the duck-stone?” she whispered.