_Where trespassers are not prosecuted they must
pray to be forgiven; or else change their ways._
Of course Sibyl’s friends were surprised that she should have left her
children, and of course they said so; what are friends for if they do
not say what they think?
Said one: “I should be afraid to love a man so much; he might die.”
Said another: “Is that reason enough for not loving a man?” Another, a
great friend, found it an extraordinary thing leaving her girl, just
out.
“You know what the girl says of her mother?” asked another. “She says
she is _grande amoureuse_!”
“Most extraordinary leaving her,” said yet another, having nothing more
original to say.
It was passed along the dado of dowagers at a ball and most of them
agreed. Only one said a husband came first, but she was a moderately
young dowager with a tilted tiara and memories in her eyes.
“When he’s young,” suggested another.
“Yes, but Eustace is old enough to look after himself,” several agreed.
Meanwhile Marcus looked after Diana. She found him curiously and
delightfully old-fashioned—much more so than Aunt Elsie.
She loved to tease him about his collections. “That darling little
Ming thing,” she said, with her head on one side, an invitation to
correction.
He wished she would speak more reverently of the Chinese—“The Ming
thing, as you call it—”
“_Darling_ Ming thing,” interposed Diana, with her head on the other
side.
“—As you call it,” went on Marcus, disapproving her attitude of
irreverence, “is a thing before which experts bow.”
“Worshipping it as its maker worshipped his ancestors.”
“I wish I could educate you, Diana, to speak wisely, at all events.”
“Is ‘darling little Ming thing’ not wise?” she asked.
“Well, now,—let us consider it. If it’s not darling,
what is it? You won’t let me call it dear, and it’s not
impatient—obstructive—indifferent—argumentative—callous—but it is
darling, just darling. Soft to the touch—pleasing to the eye—a very
ready-money way of spending. Do you know what you could do with what
you paid for that darling little Ming thing?”
Marcus shook his head.
“You could take a baby from its earliest days, from its cradle—you
could feed it, clothe it. You could teach it to write, to talk (when
spoken to), to spell—talk wisely, write wisely, and spell correctly.
You could send it to school—privately, publicly. You could college
it—if it scholarshipped itself. You could train it in the business way
it should go. It might become a politician, a financier, a collector
of Chinese porcelain—or a useful member of society and a good citizen;
and for all that there stands the darling little Ming thing in a
cabinet—untouched by housemaids.”
“You ridiculous child,” said Marcus, and his thoughts flew to that
girl who had taken in her dogskin-gloved hands a vase less beautiful,
infinitely less valuable, than any in his collection, yet most
desirable.
“Aunt Elsie’s got a delicious powder-blue vase,” said Diana.
“Has she?” said Marcus, knowing the kind of blue china women with
country cottages invest in.
Marcus was not so wise as he thought. Diana discovered that before she
had been in his house a week. While she was discovering him not so very
wise, he was finding her delightfully sympathetic. Discounting her
understanding—certain of her sympathy—he unburdened his soul to her
because, he said, she must have suffered just as he had. Her mother’s
absorption in her father must have grieved her: she must have felt out
of it: she and Dick too—
“You think that? How strange!” said Diana, her chin in her hands, her
eyes looking at him with their habitual expression of understanding.
“Why, Dick and I have often discussed it and we think quite
differently. We are so glad she should have that tremendous happiness.
We love to see her. An ordinary humdrum affection would never have
satisfied her. I believe their love for each other is the kind of which
you read in history—more particularly in French memoirs—it’s almost
terrifying. She’s his inspiration and without her he isn’t himself. The
sympathy between them is amazing. Once when I was ill—he was away—she
tried to keep it from him; she said nothing in her letters and he
telegraphed: ‘What is it? Tell me.’ It’s no use standing against that,
my Uncle Marcus, and we don’t want to. No one could be more to me than
Mummy is, but Dick and I are very near to one another,—nearer than most
brothers and sisters,—and somehow or other we feel as if we ought to be
more understanding than most children whose parents don’t understand
each other at all—See?”
“Yes—and if you marry—as your mother married?” said Marcus, still
seeking an excuse for the hurt that was within him—even now.
Diana said: “If I did, Dick would be very pleased. Love can’t be
selfish and live—even Shan’t says, ‘Love can’t be shelfish,’ and it
can’t.”
“Then I don’t love,” said Marcus ruefully.
“Yes, my uncle, you do.”
“It’s a devilish selfish kind of love, then.”
“It is that,” agreed Diana softly.
“I can’t,” confessed Marcus, “bear to think of your aunt waiting to
snatch you from me. She’s so violent.”
Diana laughed. “What a delightful description of Aunt Elsie!”
“Tell me—what is she like?”
“She’s devilish unselfish—very charming—and she wears an elastic to
keep her hat on—”
“Don’t!” said Marcus; he had had enough.
There entered into Marcus’s soul a great peace (when he could forget
the aunt); into his house floods of sunshine. The blinds were pulled
up, right up to the top, let go with a bang. The things in his house
that he had accounted beautiful must now court comparison with a slip
of a girl, who to her uncle’s mind was the very first expression of
beauty. Imagine, then, his chagrin when, one night at a ball, a friend
of his, who had bought for him many of his treasures, who was known
to be a judge of beauty, pronounced Diana attractive and fascinating
without being strictly beautiful. If a connoisseur had found his
Charles II chalice a copy he could not have felt more keenly the
affront. If he had been a child he would have said, “Shan’t play any
more,” so deeply was he hurt. Seeing a nice-looking, pretty woman
sitting by herself, with an expression on her face as though she were
singing hymns to her babies in bed, he went up and spoke to her. He
knew her, of course, but did not always find time to speak to her, for
she never gathered a crowd and he hated to be conspicuous—unless at the
same time distinguished.
“I am with my niece,” he said, sitting down.
“And which is your niece?” she asked, turning her kind eyes towards
him. She seemed to hold up her tiara by the force of uplifted eyebrows.
Marcus showed her.
“That lovely thing!” she exclaimed with a generous enthusiasm, and
Marcus felt a tingle all down his spine and an inclination to cry.
How could any man with a pretension to taste have pronounced her
fascinating without being strictly beautiful?
“Yes,” he said; “you admire her?”
“Admire her! Could I do anything else?”
“If you were less beautiful yourself—yes!” said Marcus, with a rush of
gratitude.
To say the little woman was astonished does not express in the least
what she felt, but she was as shaken as was Marcus by the hysterical
outburst. He felt he could never trust himself again.
He had told quite the wrong kind of woman she was beautiful.
He wasn’t happy again until he had drawn Diana’s attention to the
little woman and asked her what she thought of her.
“That dear little Madonna? Why, she’s exactly what Aunt Elsie goes
second-class to Italy to gaze upon—the type exactly. Do go and tell her
she’s beautiful. It’s all she needs.”
“I have,” said Marcus.
“Stout heart!” said Diana, patting his arm.
Marcus found it necessary and expedient to pass the little woman again
to see if she had recovered, and he found her asleep under her tiara.
He would have passed on, but she awoke. “It’s so late, isn’t it? But
they must enjoy themselves, mustn’t they?”
Marcus said it seemed imperative nowadays.
“You are a very lucky uncle,” said the little woman.
Again that curious feeling in the spine, like the running down of cold
water, assailed Marcus. “I am,” he agreed.
“He’s so perfectly charming and delightful—”
“Who?” The feeling of flappiness changed to one of apprehension.
The little woman looked: Marcus’s eyes followed hers, and saw standing
in the doorway a tall man, on whose arm rested the hand of a great
personage. Up the stairs which were straight opposite the doorway came
a figure in white—the radiant figure of a niece. In her face he thought
was all the joy in the world, concentrated into one look. That look, he
feared, was captured and kept by the younger of the two men. The elder
man, with an amused gesture and a look of kind understanding, walked
away.
“Her mother, all over again,” groaned Marcus.
As they drove home together—radiant niece, discomfited uncle—he said
nothing, and she said: “You funny old thing.” Then there was a pause.
She put out one slim foot (she had kicked off her satin shoe) and
rested it on the seat opposite.
“You wouldn’t do that, Diana, if you were driving with a strange
man—would you?” he asked anxiously, handing her the shoe.
“I might—but of course I should have to marry him—according to your
creed. The world of your making, Marcus, must be a very dangerous place
to live in. It must be difficult in your world to avoid pitfalls.
The sins are many. In a world of my making there would be sins, of
course,—lying and cheating, meanness,—they should be great sins.
Greater sins should be jealousy—unkindness to children—and that’s all
for to-day, thank you.”
“My dear Diana, there is a very big sin about which you probably know
nothing and it has its beginnings in what you call—”
Diana laid her hand on his. “Marcus,” she said, “think, wouldn’t
the sin of which you are thinking come under the head possibly of
unkindness to children—?”
“My dear child, your ideas are very curious.”
“Do you think so?”
“Tell me what you think about things. I know so little of young people.”
“What can I tell? My religion? I am a broad-minded Christian.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Of course, I know that, dear child.”
“Which?”
“Which what?”
“That I am broad-minded or that I am a Christian?”
“A Christian, and it’s as well to be broad-minded, without being too
broad-minded.”
“There are many ways to Heaven; I must choose one. Is that it?”
“Perhaps. I don’t see what you want with new religions.”
“You think the well-worn narrow path the better way—the path down which
two can’t go abreast.”
“I didn’t mean religion exactly; that goes without saying.”
“Does it? Yes, I think you are right. One can’t say much about what one
most feels, can one?”
“Your ideas about life generally is more what I mean.”
“Life? What life? Which life? This everyday dancing life—or the life
that comes later?”
“The life that comes later—your life. What life do you look forward
to?” If Marcus imagined Diana looked forward to a life wherein visits
to Uncle Marcus on Sundays were things of delirious delight, he was
likely to be disappointed.
“Oh, I see—well, I suppose when I have danced a great deal and
frivolled a great deal—and cried a great deal—and laughed a great
deal—I shall marry.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean, I suppose.” The Sunday visits after all were
not so improbable. He would have every conceivable clockwork toy in the
cupboard. “Now what are your ideas of marriage—just having a good time?”
“Partly; of course, I should like a pearl necklace—or a rope,
perhaps—and three babies.”
“And what sort of a mother would you be?”
“A good, hard-working, honest mother, of course—”
“Hard-working?”
“I should work hard to make them good babies.”
“And their father? What sort of a man should he be?”
“Like my father, if another exists.”
The vision of visits on Sundays faded away, the clockwork toys were put
back in the cupboard, they wouldn’t go—not one of them.
“Your father? Is he your ideal?”
“Of course—there is no one like him.”
“And for this man who is to be so good, you will keep yourself—good?”
“What do you mean?” asked Diana passionately, her eyes shining, her
cheeks aflame.
In a moment Marcus was humble, explaining eagerly that he was only
trying to find out—if these friendships between boys and girls were
good things—and wise? He had been frightened—
“By dowagers,” said Diana; “why do you go and sit among them and
gossip? Why don’t you say straight out, ‘Diana, would you let a man
kiss you?’ Say it—be quick—or I shall go.”
She held the speaking-tube to her lips, threatening; Marcus was dumb.
“Stop!” she commanded, and Tooke, the chauffeur, obeyed.
She opened the door of the car and stepped out—into the street. It all
happened in a second before Marcus realized what she was going to do.
He followed her as quickly as he could, but she was too quick for
him. What a sight for London—he thought—at four o’clock on a summer’s
morning: the day dawning—or dawned—and into the arms of the rising sun,
like a leaf blown by the wind, hardly seeming to touch the ground, flew
Diana—to Marcus’s astonished vision a whirl of white tulle and long
legs; and after her ran he—Marcus Maitland, uncle, bachelor, taxpayer,
and citizen. Behind him he heard the hoot of a horn and the car
stopped. “Better get in, sir; you can’t go the pace and Miss Diana will
tire. Very good, sir—” This at an impatient gesture from Mr. Maitland,
and Marcus went on, Tooke not driving fast enough to catch the niece
fleeing, or slow enough to witness the discomfiture of the uncle
pursuing. When Marcus arrived at his door he presumed he would find a
beaten and humbled niece, unable to get in: but he found the door wide
open, a detestable habit of hers: she must have had her key. He went
into the hall—listened. Not a sound; he stole upstairs and listened.
He heard a sound of running water—it was Diana’s bath filling. He was
very, very angry with her. She was like her aunt—exactly like; he had
known that aunt was a violent woman.
He went to bed and he slept badly. A few hours later, with his morning
tea Pillar brought him a note. He opened it and read:
You have trespassed where an uncle may not go—there are places in
our hearts that are barred, even to mothers, and mothers know it and
understand. I know, dear old thing, you don’t realize how big your
feet are or how heavily you tread. You have squashed all sorts of
little plants that were beginning to grow in my heart—that’s a pity,
you know! Aunt Elsie never trespasses, for all her violence. You have
lived too long in your narrow world, dear old Marcus. A world in which
no man can be trusted at all and women only a little. I have become
more distrustful of men since I lived with you than I ever was before.
You will say that is what you wish. But it is not what I wish. Why
are you and Aunt Elsie both afraid of the opposite sex? Aunt Elsie is
frightened if she meets a drunken bricklayer in a lane after sundown.
Why? You are just as afraid of a woman. Why? I would rather go round
the world alone with a man than with a woman. I shan’t do it because
it’s not done—as they say. But Dick says there should be no possible
harm in it.
When Marcus came down to breakfast he was as silent, as quiet, as a
heron fishing on the shore of a Highland loch—and as shy. He was sure
Diana would put her arms round his neck and forgive him—and ask his
forgiveness. (He was an old-fashioned uncle.) But no Diana came. When
he told Pillar to send up word that—Pillar said Miss Diana had been
called very early—in fact had not been to bed, he believed—and had gone—
“Where?”
“To Miss Carston, sir.”
“How did she go?”
“The car, sir; it happened—Tooke chanced to be about; after all, it’s
the best way of going, sir, isn’t it?”
“When Tooke returns I want to see him.”
The joys of living alone were once more Marcus’s. What were they?
There was no one to seize the coffee-pot when he wanted it; to ask him
whom his letters were from; to read him bits out of the paper; bits
he didn’t want to hear; bits he had read the evening before. There
was no one to discuss plans that could never come off. There were no
engagements read out to him, between people he had never heard of—at
all events, by the names of Toddy and Doddy and Buffy and Bunny.
On the other hand, there were things he missed. She had amused him.
Her girl friends had seemed to him amazing people: her boy friends not
less amazing. Their spirits were wonderful, their ways past finding
out, their ingenuity remarkable, their patronage almost tender in its
pity. Diana and her friends were no more. Pillar remained. And in the
country lived Miss Carston and to her Diana had gone—in his car!
That evening entered Pillar. “Tooke is here, sir.”
“Send him in,” said Marcus, glad that his anger had in no way grown
less during the day.
Entered Tooke, cap in hand. A chauffeur unarmed: he said nothing, of
course. But there was a look in his eyes that said as clearly as though
he had spoken it—as man to man: “What would you have done in my place?
What would you have done if she had arst you?”
A capless, unarmed chauffeur, yet armed to the eyes—invulnerable was
Tooke.
“Tooke?”
“Sir?”
“Car run well?”
“Fine, sir.”
“I was thinking, Tooke, that we ought to have a lining made if Miss
Diana is going much into the country—what is the stuff? You know—kind
of drill, isn’t it? It would save the lining; see to it, will you?”
“Very good, sir. A detachable lining, I take it you mean, sir?”
“Yes.”