DIANA TEMPEST.

Diana Tempest.

By Mary Cholmondeley, Author of "The Danvers Jewels," "Sir Charles Danvers," etc.

In Three Volumes. Vol. II.

London: Richard Bentley & Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. 1893. (All rights reserved.)

CHAPTER I.

"The fact is, I have never loved any one well enough to put myself into a noose for them. It is a noose, you know."—George Eliot.

IT was the middle of July. The season had reached the climax which precedes a collapse. The heat was intense. The pace had been too great to last. The rich sane were already on their way to Scotch moor or Norwegian river; the rich insane and the poor remained, and people with daughters—assiduously entertaining the dwindling numbers of the "uncertain, coy,[2] and hard to please" jeunesse dorée of the present day. There were some great weddings fixed for the end of July, proving that marriage was not extinct,—prospective weddings which, like iron rivets, held the crumbling fabric of the season together.

If the unusual heat had driven away half the world, still the greater part of the little world mentioned in these pages remained. Not quite all, for Sir Henry and Lady Verelst had departed rather suddenly for Norway, and Lord Frederick was drinking the water at Homburg or Aix; and thriving on a beverage which never passed his lips without admixture in his own country, except in connection with the toothbrush.

But John and his aunt Miss Fane were still in the large cool house in Park Lane. Lord Hemsworth was still baking himself for no apparent reason in his rooms over his club. Mrs. Courtenay and Di were still in[3] town, because they could not afford to go until their country visits began.

"Oh, granny," said Di one afternoon as they sat together in the darkened drawing-room, "let us cut everything. Do be ill, and let me write round to say we have been obliged to leave town."

Mrs. Courtenay shook her head.

"We can't go till we have somewhere to go to, and we are not due at Archelot till the first of August."

"Could not we afford a week, just one week, at the sea first?"

"No, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I have thought it over. Only the rich can have their cake and eat it. We had a victoria for a fortnight in June. That meant no seaside this year."

There was a pause.

"I wish I were married," said Di, looking affectionately at Mrs. Ccurtenay's pale face.[4] "I wish I had a rich, kind husband. I would not mind if he parted his hair down the middle, or even if he came down to breakfast in slippers, if only he would give me everything I wanted. And he should stay up in London, and we would run down to the seaside together, G., first-class; I am not sure I should not take a coupé for you; and you should go out on the sands in the donkey-chairs that your soul loves; and have ice on the butter and cream in the tea; and in the evening we would sit on a first-floor balcony (no more second-floors if I were rich) and watch a cool moon rising over a cool sea. I wish moonlight on the sea were not so expensive. The beauties of nature are very dear, granny. Sunsets cost money nowadays."

"Everything costs money," said Mrs. Courtenay.

[5]

Di was silent a little while; it was too hot to talk except at intervals.

"I don't think I mind being poor," she said at last. "For myself, I mean. I have looked at being poor in the face, and it is not half so bad as rich people seem to think. I mean our kind of poorness; of course, not the poverty of nothing a year and ten children to educate, who ought never to have been born. But some people think that the kind of means (like ours) which narrow down pleasures, and check one at every turn, and want a sharp tug to meet at the end of the year, are a dreadful misfortune. Really I don't see it. Of course it is annoying being less well off than any of our friends, and now I come to think of it, all the people we know are richer than ourselves. I wonder how it happens. But there is something rather interesting after all in combating small means. Look at that[6] screen I made you last year, and think of the gnawing envy it has awakened in the hearts of friends. It was a clothes-horse once, but genius was brought to bear upon it, and it is a very imposing object now. And then my dear Emersons, all eleven of them, I don't think I could have valued

them so much, or have been so furious with Jane for spilling water on one of them, if they had not emerged one by one out of my glove and shoe money."

"Oh, my dear, poverty does not matter, nothing matters while you are young and strong. But it presses hard when one is growing old. Money eases everything."

"I feel that; and sometimes when I see you working a sovereign out of the neck of that horrid little woollen jug in the writing-table drawer, I simply long for money for your sake, that you may never be worried about it any more. And sometimes I should like[7] it for the sake of all the lovely places in the world that other people go to (people who only remember the table d'hôte dinners when they come back), and the books that I cannot afford, and the pictures that seem my very own, only they belong to some one else; and the kind things one could do to poor people who could not return them, which rich people don't seem to think of: rich people's kindnesses are always so expensive. Yes, I long for money sometimes, but all the time I know I don't really care about it. There seems to be no pleasure in having anything if there is no difficulty in getting it. I would rather marry a poor man with brains and do my best with his small income, and help him up, than spend a rich man's money. Any one can do that. I fear I shall never take you to the seaside, my own

G., or send you pre-paid hampers of hothouse flowers, or game, after Mr. Di's[8] battues, for I am certain Providence intends me to be a poor man's wife, if I enter the holy estate at all, because—I should make such a good one."

"You would make a good wife, Di, but I sometimes think you will never marry," said Mrs. Courtenay, sadly. She felt the heat.

"Well, granny, I won't say I feel sure I shall never marry, because all girls say that, and it generally means nothing. But still that is what I feel without saying it. Do you remember poor old Aunt Belle when she was dying, and how nothing pleased her, and how she said at last: 'I want—I want—I don't know what I want'? Well, when I come to think of it, I really don't know what I want. I know what I don't want. I don't want a kind, indulgent husband, and a large income, and good horses, and pretty little frilled children with their mother's eyes, that one shows[9] to people and is proud of. It is all very nice. I am glad when I see other people happy like that. I should like to see you pleased; but for myself—really—I think I should find them rather in the way. I dare say I might make a good wife, as you say. I believe I could be rather a cheerful companion, and affectionate if it was not exacted of me. But somehow all that does not hit the mark. The men who have cared for me have never seemed to like me for myself, or to understand the something

behind the chatter and the fun which is the real part of me—which, if I married one of them, would never be brought into play, and would die of starvation. The only kind of marriage I have ever had a chance of seems to me like a sort of suicide—seems as if it would be one's best self that would be killed, while the other self, the well-dressed, society-loving, ball-going, easy-going self,[10] would be all that was left of me, and would dance upon my grave."

Mrs. Courtenay was silent. She never ridiculed any thought, however crude and young, if it were genuine. She was one of the few people who knew whether Di was in fun or in earnest, and she knew she was in earnest now.

"There are such things as happy marriages," she said.

"Yes, granny; but I think it is the happy marriages I see which make me afraid of marrying. I know it is foolish to expect to meet with anything better than the ordinary happy marriage, and one ought to be thankful if one met with that, for half the world does not. But when I see what is called a happy marriage I always think, is that all? Somebody who believes everything I do is right, however silly it is, and knows how many lumps of sugar I take in[11] my tea—like Arnold and Lily—people point at that marriage as such a model, because they have been married two years and are still as silly as they were. But whenever I stay with them, and she talks nonsense, and he thinks it is all the wisdom of Solomon; and she gives him a blotting-pad, and he gives her a fan; and then they look at each other, and then run races in the garden, and each waits for the other, and they come in hand-in-hand as if they had done something clever—whenever I behold these things it all seems to me a sort of game that I should be ashamed to play at, and I feel, if that is

all, at least all I ought to expect, that it is a kind of happiness I don't care to have. Must love be always a sort of pretence, granny, and such a blind, silly, unreasoning feeling when it does exist? If ever I fall in love, shall I set up an assortment of lamentable, ludicrous illusions about some[12] commonplace young man, as Lily does about that pink Arnold? Can't love be real, like hate? Can't people ever look at each other, and see each other as they are, and love each other for what they are?"

"The Lilies and the Arnolds would not marry if they saw each other as they are, my dear, and they would miss a great deal of happiness in consequence. There would be very few marriages if there were no illusions."

Di was silent.

Mrs. Courtenay stitched a resolution into her lace-work concerning a man whom no one could call commonplace, and presently spoke again.

"You are confusing 'being in love' with love itself," she said. "The one is common to vulgarity, the other rare, at least between men and women. It is the best thing life has to offer. But I have noticed that those[13] who believe in it, and hope for it, and refuse the commoner love for it, generally—remain unmarried. And now, my dear, send down Evans with my black lace mantilla, and my new bonnet, for Mrs. Darcy said she would lend us her carriage for the afternoon, and it comes at five. Put on a white gown, and make yourself look cool. I must call on Miss Fane, and afterwards we will go down and see the pony races at Hurlingham. Lord Hemsworth sent us tickets for to-day. He is riding, I think."

[14]

CHAPTER II.

"The little waves make the large ones, and are of the same pattern."—George Eliot.

JOHN was dragging himself feebly across the hall to the smoking-room, after a dutiful cup of tea with his aunt, who was prostrate with a headache, when the door-bell rang, and he saw the champing profiles of a pair of horses through one of the windows. Following his masculine instincts, he hurried across the hall with all the celerity he could muster, and had just got safe under cover when the footman answered the bell. His ear caught the name of Mrs. Courtenay through the open door of the smoking-room, and presently,[15] though he knew Miss Fane did not consider herself well enough to see visitors, there was a slow rustling across the hall, and up the stairs, accompanied by a light firm footfall that could hardly belong to James, whose elephantine rush had so often disturbed him when he was ill.

As James came down again, John looked out of the smoking-room door.

"Who is with Miss Fane?"

"Mrs. Courtenay, sir."

"Any one else?"

"No, sir. Miss Fane could only see Mrs. Courtenay. Miss Tempest, as come with her, is in the gold drawing-room."

John shut the smoking-room door and went and looked out of the window. It was not a cheerful prospect, but that did not matter much, as he happened to be looking at it without seeing it. Lindo got up on a chair and looked solemnly out too, rolling the[16] whites of his eyes occasionally at his master from under his bushy brows, and yawning long tongue-curling yawns of sheer ennui. The cowls on the chimney-pots twirled. The dead plants on the leads were still dead. The cook's canary was going up and down on its two perches like a machine. John reflected that it was rather a waste of canary power; but, perhaps, there was nothing to hold back for in its bachelor existence. It would stand still enough presently when it was stuffed.

Could he get upstairs by himself? That was the question. He could come down, but that was not of much interest to him just now. Could he get up again? Only the first floor. Shallow stairs. Sit down half way. Awkward to be found sitting there, certainly. One thing was certain: that he was not going to be conveyed up in Marshall's solemn embrace as heretofore. John[17] reflected that he must begin to walk by himself some time. Why not now? Very slowly, of course. Why not now?

It certainly was slow. But the stairs were shallow. There were balusters. It was done at last. If that alpine summit—the upper mat—was finally reached on hands and knees, who was the wiser?

John was breathless but triumphant. His hands were a trifle black; but what of that? The door of the gold drawing-room was open. It was a historic room, the decoration of which had been left untouched since the days when the witty Mrs. Tempest, whom Gainsborough painted, held her salon there. It was a long pillared room. Curtains of some old-fashioned pale gold brocade, not made now, hung from the white pillars and windows. The gold-coloured walls were closely lined with dim pictures from the ceiling to the old Venetian leather of the dado.[18] Tall, gilt eastern figures, life size, meant to hold lamps, stood here and there, raising their empty hands, hideous, but peculiar to the room, with its bygone stately taste, and stiff white and gilt chairs and settees. John drew aside the curtain, and then hesitated. A family of tall white lilies in pots were gathered together in one of the further windows. Di was standing by them, turned towards him, but without perceiving him. She had evidently introduced herself to the lilies as a friend of the family, and was

touching the heads of those nearest to her very gently, very tenderly with one finger. She stood in the full light, like some tall splendid lily herself, against the golden background.

John drew in his breath. It was his house; they were his lilies. The empty setting which seemed to claim her for its own, to group itself so naturally round her, was all[19] his. There was a tremor of prophesy in the air. His brain seemed to turn slowly round in his head. He had come upstairs too quickly. His hand clutched the curtain. He felt momentarily incapable of stirring or speaking. The old physical pain, which only loosed him at intervals, tightened its thongs. But he dreaded to see her look up and find him watching her. He went forward and held out his hand in silence.

Di looked up and her expression changed instantly. A lovely colour came into her face, and her eyes shone. She advanced quickly towards him.

"Oh, John!" she said. "Is it really you? I was afraid we should not see you before we left town. But you ought not to stand." (John's complexion was passing from white to ashen grey, to pale green.) "Sit down." She held both his passive hands in hers. She would not for worlds[20] have let him see that she thought he was going to faint. "This is a nice chair by the window," drawing him gently to it. "I was just admiring your lilies. You will let me ring for a cup of tea, I know. I am so thirsty." It was done in a moment, and she was back again beside him, only a voice now, a voice among the lilies, which appeared and disappeared at intervals. One tall furled lily head came and went with astonishing celerity, and the voice spoke gently and cheerfully from time to time. It was like a wonderful dream in a golden dusk. And then there was a little clink and clatter, and a cup of tea suddenly appeared close to him out of the darkness; and there was Di's voice again, and a momentary glimpse of Di's earnest eyes, which did not match her tranquil unconcerned voice.

He drank the tea mechanically without troubling to hold the cup, which seemed to[21] take the initiative with a precision and an independence of support, which would have surprised him at any other time. The tea, what little there was of it, was the nastiest he had ever tasted. It might have been made in a brandy bottle. But it certainly cleared the air. Gradually the room came back. The light came back. He came back himself. It was all hardly credible. There was Di sitting opposite him, evidently quite unaware that he had been momentarily overcome, and assiduously engaged in pouring out another cup of tea. She had taken off her gloves, and he watched her cool slender hands give herself a lump of sugar. (Only one small lump, John observed. He must remember that.) Then she filled up the teapot from the little gurgling silver kettle. What forethought. Wonderful! and yet all apparently so natural. She seemed to do it as a matter of course. He ought to be[22] helping her, but somehow he was not. Would she take bread and butter, or one of those little round things? She took a piece

of bread and butter. Perhaps it would be as well to listen to what she was saying. He lost the first part of the sentence because she began to stir her tea at the moment, and he could not attend to two things at once. But presently he heard her say—

"Mrs. Courtenay thinks young people ought not to mind missing tea altogether. But I do mind; don't you? I think it is the pleasantest meal in the day."

John cautiously assented that it was. He felt that he must be very careful, or a slight dizziness which was now rapidly passing off might be noticed.

Di went on talking unconcernedly, bending her burnished golden head in its little white bonnet over the teacups. She seemed to take a great interest in the tea-things, and[23] the date of the apostle spoons. Presently she looked at him again, and a relieved smile came into her face.

"Are you ready for another cup?" she said. And it was not a dream any longer, but all quite real and true, and he was real too.

"No, thanks," said John, taking his cup with extreme deliberation from a table at his elbow, where he supposed he had set it down. "There is something wrong about the tea, I think. Do send yours away and have some more. It has a very odd taste."

"Has it?" said Di, meeting his eye firmly, but with an effort. "I don't notice it. On the contrary, I think it is rather good. Try another cup."

"Perhaps the water did not boil," suggested John feebly, reflecting that his temporary indisposition might have been the cause of his dislike, but anxious to conceal the fact.

"That is a direct reflection on my tea-[24]making," said Di. "You had better be more careful what you say." And she quickly pushed a stumpy little liqueur-bottle behind the silver tea-caddy.

"I beg pardon, and ask humbly for another cup," said John, smiling. The pain had left him again, as it generally did after he had remained quiet for a time, and in the relief from it he had a vague impression that the present moment was too good to last. He did not know that it was usual to wash out a cup so carefully as Di did his, but she seemed to think it the right thing, and she probably knew. Anyhow, the second cup was capital. John was not allowed to drink tea. The doctors who were knitting firmly together again the slender threads that had so far bound him to this world, believed he was imbibing an emulsion of something or other strengthening and nauseous at that moment.

[25]

"Oh! There is a tea-cake," said Di, discovering another dish behind the kettle. "Why did not I see it before?"

"It is not too late, I hope," said John, anxiously. The stupidity of James in putting a tea-cake (which might have been preferred to bread and butter) out of sight behind an opaque kettle, caused him profound annoyance.

But Di could not take a personal interest in the tea-cake. She looked back at the lilies.