"Before Jehovah's awful throne,Ye nations bow-wow-wow with sacred joy."When the clergyman had blessed his flock, and the flock had hurried with his blessing into the open air, Di and Johnremained behind to look at the nibbled old stone font, engraved with tangled signs, and unknown beasts with protruding unknown tongues, where little Tempests had whimpered and protested against a Christianity they did not understand. The aisle and chancel were paved with worn lettered stones, obliterated memorials of forgotten Tempests who had passed at midnight with flaring torches from their first home on the crag to their last in the valley. The walls bore record too. John had put up a tablet to his predecessor. It contained only the name, and date of birth and death, and underneath the single sentence—"Until the day break, and the shadows flee away."Di read the words in silence, and then turned the splendour of her deep glance upon him. Since when had the bare fact of meeting her eyes become so exceedingsharp and sweet, such an epoch in the day? John writhed inwardly under their gentle scrutiny."You are very loyal," she said.He felt a sudden furious irritation against her which took him by surprise, and then turned to scornful anger against himself. He led the way out of the church into the sad September sunshine, and talked of indifferent subjects till they reached the Castle. And after luncheon John went to the library and stared at the shelves again, and Miss Fane ambled and grunted to church, and Di sat with her grandmother.There are some acts of self-sacrifice for which the performers will never in this world obtain the credit they deserve. Mrs. Courtenay, who was addicted to standing proxy for Providence, and was not afraid to take upon herself responsibilities which belong to Omniscience alone, had not hesitated to performsuch an act, in the belief that the cause justified the means. Indeed, in her eyes a good cause justified many sorts and conditions of means.All Saturday and half Sunday she had repressed the pangs of a healthy appetite, and had partaken only of the mutton-broth and splintered toast of invalidism. With a not ill-grounded dread lest Di's quick eyes should detect a subterfuge, she had gone so far as to take "heart-drops" three times a day from the hand of her granddaughter, and had been careful to have recourse to her tin of arrowroot biscuits only in the strictest privacy. But now that Sunday afternoon had come, she felt that she could safely relax into convalescence. The blinds were drawn up, and she was established in an armchair by the window."You seem really better," said Di. "I should hardly have known you had had oneof your attacks. You generally look so pale afterwards.""It has been very slight," said Mrs. Courtenay, blushing faintly. "I took it in time. I shall be able to travel to-morrow. I suppose you and Miss Fane went to church this morning?""Miss Fane would not go, but John and I did."Mrs. Courtenay closed her eyes. Virtue may be its own reward, but it is gratifying when it is not the only one."Granny," said Di, suddenly, "I never knew, till John told me, that my mother had been engaged to his father.""What has John been raking up those old stories for?""I don't think he raked up anything. He seemed to think I knew all about it. He was showing me my mother's miniature which he had found among his father'spapers. I always supposed that the reason you never would talk about her was because you had felt her death too much.""I was glad when she died," said Mrs. Courtenay."Was she unhappy, then? Father speaks of her rather sadly when he does mention her, as if he had been devoted to her, but she had not cared much for him, and had felt aggrieved at his being poor. He once said he had many faults, but that was the one she could never forgive. And he told me that when she died he was away on business, and she did not leave so much as a note or a message for him.""It is quite true; she did not," said Mrs. Courtenay, in a suppressed voice. "I have never talked to you about your mother, Di, because I knew if I did I should prejudice you against your father, and I have no right to do that.""I think," said Di, "that now I know a little you had better tell me the rest, or I shall only imagine things were worse than the reality."So Mrs. Courtenay told her; told her of the little daughter who had been born to her in the first desolation of her widowhood, round whom she had wrapped in its entirety the love that many women divide between husband and sons and daughters.She told Di of young Mr. Tempest, then just coming forward in political life, between whom and herself a friendship had sprung up in the days when he had been secretary to her brother, then in the Ministry. The young man was constantly at her house. He was serious, earnest, diffident, ambitious. Di reached the age of seventeen. Mrs. Courtenay saw the probable result, and hoped for it. With some persons to hope for anything is to remove obstacles from the path of its achievement."And yet, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I can't reproach myself. Theyweresuited to each other. It is as clear to me now as it was then. She did not love him, but I knew she would; and she had seen no one else. And he worshipped her. I threw them together, but I did not press her to accept him. She did accept him, and we went down to Overleigh together. She had—this room. I remembered it directly I saw it again. The engagement had not been formally given out, and the wedding was not to have been till the following spring on account of her youth. I think Mr. Tempest and I were the two happiest people in the world. I felt such entire confidence in him, and I was thankful she should not run the gauntlet of all that a beautiful girl is exposed to in society. She was as innocent as a child of ten, and as unconscious of her beauty—which, poor child! was very great."And then he—your father—came to Overleigh. Ten days afterwards they went away together, and I—I who had never been parted from her for a night since her birth—I never saw her again, except once across a room at a party, until four years afterwards, when her first child was born. I went to her then. I tried not to go, for she did not send for me; but she was the only child I had ever had, and I remembered my own loneliness when she was born. And the pain of staying away became too great, and I went. And—she was quite changed. She was not the least like my child, except about the eyes; and she was taller. Mr. Tempest never forgave her, because he loved her; but I forgave her at last, because I loved her more than he did. I saw her often after that. She used to tell me when your father would be away—and he was much away—and then I went to her. Iwould not meethim. We never spoke of her married life. It did not bear talking about, for she had really loved him, and it took him a long time to break her of it. We talked of the baby, and servants, and the price of things, for she was very poor. She was loyal to her husband. She never spoke about him except once. I remember that day. It was one of the last before she died. I found her sitting by the fire reading 'Consuelo.' I sat down by her, and we remained a long time without speaking. Often we sat in silence together. You have not come to the places on the road, my dear, when somehow words are no use any more, and the only poor comfort left is to be with some one who understands and says nothing. When you do, you will find silence one degree more bearable than speech."At last she turned to the book, and pointed to a sentence in it. I can see thepage now, and the tall French print. 'Le caractère de cet homme entraîne les actions de sa vie. Jamais tu ne le changeras.'"'I think that is true,' she said. 'Some characters seem to be settled beforehand, like a weathercock with its leaded tail. They cannot really change, because they are always changing. Nothing teaches them. Happiness, trouble, love, and hate bring no experience. They swing round to every wind that blows on one pivot always—themselves. There was a time when I am afraid I tired God with one name. "Jamais tu ne le changeras." No, never. One changes one's self. That is all. And now, instead of reproaching others, I reproach myself—bitterly—bitterly.'"And she never begged my pardon. She once said, when I found her very miserable, that it was right that one who had made others suffer should suffer too. But thosewere the only times she alluded to the past, and I never did. I did not go to her to reproach her. The kind of people who are cut by reproaches have generally reproached themselves more harshly than any one else can. She had, I know. It would have been better if she had been less reserved, and if she could have taken more interest in little things. But she did not seem able to. Some women, and they are the happy ones, can comfort themselves in a loveless marriage with pretty note-paper, and tying up the legs of chairs with blue ribbon. She could not do that, and I think she suffered more in consequence. Those little feminine instincts are not given us for nothing."She never gave in until she knew she was dying. Then she tried to speak, but she sank rapidly. She said something about you, and then smiled when her voice failed her, and gave up the attempt. I think shewas so glad to go that she did not mind anything else much. They held the baby to her as a last chance, and made it cry. Oh, Di, how you cried! And she trembled very much just for a moment, and then did not seem to take any more notice, though they put its little hand against her face. I think the end came all the quicker. It seemed too good to be true at first...."Don't cry, my dear. Young people don't know where trouble lies. They think it is in external calamity, and sickness and death. But one does not find it so. The only real troubles are those which we cause each other through the affections. Those whom we love chasten us. I never shed a single tear for her when she died. There had been too many during her life, for I loved her better than anything in the world except my husband, who died when he was twenty-five and I was twenty-two. You often remindme of him. You are a very dear child to me. She said she hoped you would make up a little to me; and you have—not a little. I have brought you up differently. I saw my mistake with her. I sheltered her too much. I hope I have not run into the opposite extreme with you. I have allowed you more liberty than is usual, and I have encouraged you to look at life for yourself, and to think and act for yourself, and learn by your own experience. And now go and bathe your eyes, and see if you can find me Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyám.' I think I saw it last in the morning-room. John and I were talking about it on Friday. I dare say he will know where it is."CHAPTER X."Si tu ne m'aimes pas moi je t'aime."IIT was the time of afternoon tea. Miss Fane rolled off the sofa, and with the hydraulic sniff that can temporarily suspend the laws of nature, proceeded to pour out tea. Presently John and the dogs came in, and Di, who had found Mrs. Courtenay's book without his assistance, followed. John had not the art of small-talk. Miss Fane, who was in the habit of attempting the simultaneous absorption of liquid and farinaceous nutriment with a perseverance not marked by success, was necessarily silent, save when a carroway seed took the wrongturn. She seldom spoke in the presence of food, any more than others do in church. Few things apart from the Bull of Bashan commanded Miss Fane's undivided homage, but food never failed to, though it was reserved for plovers' eggs and the roe of the sturgeon to stir the latent emotion of her nature to its depths.The dogs did their tricks. Lindo contrived to swallow all his own and half Fritz's portion, but, fortunately for the cause of justice, during a muffin-scattering choke on Lindo's part, Fritz's long red tongue was able to glean together fragments of what he imagined he had lost sight of for ever.Di inquired whether there were evening service."Evening service at seven," said Miss Fane; "supper at quarter past eight.""Do not go to church again," said John. "Come for a walk with me."Di readily agreed. It was very pleasant to her to be with John. She had begun to feel that he and she were near akin. He was her only first cousin. The nearness of their relationship, accounting as it did in her mind for a growing intimacy, prevented any suspicion of that intimacy having sprung from another source.They walked together through the forest in the still opal light of the waning day. Through the enlacing fingers of the trees the western sun made ladders of light. Breast-high among the bracken they went, disturbing the deer; across the heather, under the whisper of the pines, down to the steel-white reeded pools below.They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and a faint air came across the water from the trees on the further side, with a message to the trees on this. Neither talked much. The lurking sadness in the airjust touched and soothed the lurking sadness in Di's mind. She did not notice John's silence, for he was often silent. She wound a blade of grass round her finger, and then unwound it again. John watched her do it. He had noticed before, as a peculiarity of Di's, not observable in other women, that whatever she did was interesting. She asked some question about the lower pool gleaming before them through the trunks of the trees, and he answered absently the reverse of what was true."Then perhaps we had better be turning back," she said.He rose, and they went back another way, climbing slowly up and up by a little winding track through steepest forest places. Many burrs left their native stems to accompany them on their way. They showed to great advantage on Di's primrose cotton gown. At last they reached the top of therocky ridge, and she sat down, out of breath, under a group of silver firs, and, taking off her gloves, began idly to pick the burrs one by one off the folds of her gown.There was no hurry. He sat down by her, and watched her hands. She put the burrs on a stone near her.They were sitting on the topmost verge of the crag, and the forest fell away in a shimmer of green beneath their feet to the pools below, and then climbed the other side of the valley and melted into the purple of the Overleigh and Oulston moors. Far away, the steep ridge of Hambleton and the headland of Sutton Brow stood out against the evening sky. Some Tempest of bygone days had dared to perpetrate a Greek temple in a clearing among the silver firs where they were sitting, but time had effaced that desecration of one of God's high places by transforming it to a lichened ruin ofscattered stones. It was on one of these scattered stones that Di was raising a little cairn of burrs."Forty-one," she said at last. "You have not even begun your toilet yet, John."No answer.The sun was going down unseen behind a bar of cloud. A purple light was on the hills. Their faces showed that they saw the glory, but the twilight deepened over all the nearer land. Slowly the sun passed below the leaden bar, and looked back once more in full heaven, and drowned the world in light. Then with dying strength he smote the leaden bar to one long line of quivering gold, and sank dimly, redly, to the enshrouding west. All colour died. The hills were gone. The land lay dark. But far across the sky, from north to south, the line of light remained.Di had watched the sunset alone. Johnhad not seen it. His eyes were fixed on her calm face with the western glow upon it. She did not even notice that he was looking at her. One of her ungloved hands lay on her knee, so near to him yet so immeasurably far away. Could he stretch across the gulf to touch it? His expressionless face took some meaning at last. He leaned a little towards her, and laid his hand on hers.She started violently, and dropped her sunset thoughts like a surprised child its flowers. Even a less vain man than John might have been cut to the quick by the sudden horrified bewilderment of her face, and of the dazzled light-blinded eyes which turned to peer at him with such unseeing distress."Oh, John!" she said, "not you;" and she put her other hand quickly for one second on his."Yes," he said, "that is just it."Her mouth quivered painfully."I thought," she said, "we were—surely wearefriends.""No," said John, mastering the insane emotion which had leapt within him at the touch of her hand. "We never were, and we never shall be. I will have nothing to do with any friendship of yours. I'm not a beggar to be shaken off with coppers. I want everything or nothing."Her manner changed. Her self-possession came back."I am sorry it must be nothing," she said gently, and she tried quietly but firmly to withdraw her hand.His grasp on it tightened ever so little, but in an unmistakable manner, and she instantly gave up the attempt.A splendid colour mounted slowly to her face. She drew herself up. Her lightning-bright intrepid eyes met his without flinching.They looked hard at each other in the waning light. Once again they seemed to measure swords as at the moment when they first met. Each felt the other formidable. There was no slightest shred of disguise between them.There was a breathless silence.Di went through a frightful revulsion of mind. The sunset and the light along the sky seemed to have betrayed her. These pleasant days had been in league against her. And now, goaded by the grasp of his hand on hers, her mind made one headlong rush at the goal towards which these accomplices had been luring her. Where were they leading her? Glamour dropped dead. Marriage remained. To become this man's wife; to merge her life in his; to give up everything into the hand that still held hers, the pressure of which was like a claim! He had only laid his hand upon her hand, but itseemed to her that he had laid it upon her soul. Her whole being rose up against him in sudden passionate antagonism horrible to bear. And all the time she knew instinctively that he was stronger than she.John saw and understood that mental struggle almost with compassion, yet with an exultant sense of power over her. One conviction of the soul ever remains unshaken, that whom we understand is ours to have and to hold.He deliberately released her hand. She did not make the slightest movement at regaining possession of it.John wrestled with his voice, and forced it back, harsh and unfamiliar, to do his bidding."Di," he said, "I believe in truth even between men and women. I know what you are feeling about me at this moment. Well, that, even that, is better than a mistake; and you were making one. You had not thefaintest suspicion of what has been the one object of my life since the day I first met you. The fault was mine, not yours. You could not see what was not on the surface to be seen. You would have gone on for the remainder of your natural life liking me in a way I—I cannot tolerate, if I had not—done as I did. I have not the power like some men of showing their feelings. I can't say the little things and do the little things that come to others by instinct. My instinct is to keep things to myself. I always have—till now."Silence again; a silence which seemed to grow in a moment to such colossal dimensions that it was hardly credible a voice would have power to break it.The twilight had advanced suddenly upon them. The young pheasants crept and called among the bracken. The night-birds passed swift and silent as sudden thoughts.Di struggled with an unreasoning, furious anger, which, like a fiery horse, took her whole strength to control."I love you," said John, "and I shall go on loving you; and it is better you should know it."And as he spoke she became aware that her anger was but a little thing beside his."What is the good of telling me," she said, "what I—what you know I—don't wish to hear?""What good?" said John, fiercely, his face working. "Great God! do you imagine I have put myself through the torture of making myself intolerable to you for no purpose? Do you think that you can dismiss me with a few angry words? What good? The greatest good in the world, which I would turn heaven and earth to win; which please God I will win."Di became as white as he. He was toostrong, this man, with his set face, and clenched trembling hand. She was horribly frightened, but she kept a brave front. She turned towards him and would have spoken, but her lips only moved."You need not speak," he said more gently. "You cannot refuse what you have not been asked for. I ask nothing of you. Do you understand?Nothing.When I ask it will be time enough to refuse. It is getting late. Let us go home."CHAPTER XI."Those who have called the world profane have succeeded in making it so."—J. H. Thom.TTHE dreams of youth and love so frequently fade unfulfilled into "the light of common day," that it is a pleasure to be able to record that Madeleine saw the greater part of hers realized. She was received with what she termedéclatin her new neighbourhood. She remarked with complacency that everybody made much too much of her; that she had been quite touched by the enthusiasm of her reception. It was an ascertained fact that she would open the hunt ball with the President—apoint on which her maiden meditation had been much exercised. The Duchess of Southark was among the first to call upon her. If that lady's principal motive in doing so was curiosity to see what kind of wife Sir Henry, or, as he was called in his own county, "the Solicitor-General," had at length procured, Madeleine was comfortably unaware of the fact. After that single call, the duration of which was confined to nine minutes, Madeleine spoke of the duchess as "kindness and cordiality itself."She was invited to stay at Alvery, and afterwards to fill her house for a fancy ball, in October, in honour of the coming of age of Lord Elver, the duke's eldest son and chief thorn in the flesh; a young man of great promise "when you got to know him," as Madeleine averred, in which case few shared that advantage with her.Other invitations poured in. The neighbourhood was really surprised at the grace and beauty of the bride—considering. It was soon rumoured that she was a saint as well; that she read prayers every morning at Cantalupe, which the stablemen were expected to attend; and that she taught in the Sunday school. The ardent young vicar of the parish, who had hitherto languished unsupported and misunderstood at Sir Henry's door, in the flapping draperies that so well become the Church militant, was enthusiastic about her. She was what he called "a true woman." Those who use this expression best know what it means. Processions, monster candles, crucifixes, and other ingredients of the pharmacopœia of religion, swam before his mental vision. The little illegal side-altar, to which his two "crosses," namely, the churchwardens, had objected, but without which his soul couldnot rest in peace, was reinstated after a conversation with Madeleine. A promise on that lady's part to embroider an altar-cloth for the same was noised abroad.Sir Henry was jubilant at his wife's popularity, which lost nothing from her own comments on it. Although nearly six months had elapsed since his marriage, he was still in a state of blind adoration—an adoration so blind that none of the ordinary events by which disillusion begins had any power to affect him.He was not conscious that once or twice during the season in London he had been duped; that the jealousy which had flamed up so suddenly against Archie Tempest had more grounds than the single note he found in his wife's pocket, when in a fit of clumsy fondness he had turned out all its contents on her knee, solely to cogitate and wonder over them. He had a habit which triedher more than his slow faculties had any idea of, of examining Madeleine's belongings. His admiring curiosity had no suspicion in it. He liked to look at them solely because they were hers.One day, shortly after their arrival at Cantalupe, when he was sitting in stolid inconvenient sympathy in her room, whither she had vainly retreated from him on the plea of a headache, he occupied himself by opening the drawers of her dressing-table one after the other, investigating with aboriginal interest small boxes of hairpins, curling-irons, and that various assortment of feminine gear which the hairdresser elegantly designates as "toilet requisites." At last he peeped into a box where, carefully arranged side by side, were the dearest of curls on tortoiseshell combs which he had often seen on his wife's head, and some smaller much becrimped bodies which filledhim with wondering dislike—hair caricatured—frisettes."Whatareyou doing?" said Madeleine, faintly, lying on the sofa with her back to him, holding her salts to her nose. Oh, if he would only go away, this large dreadful man, and leave her half an hour in peace, without hearing him clear his throat and sniff! On the contrary, he came and sat down by her chuckling, holding the curls and frisettes in his thick hands. She dropped her smelling-bottle and looked at them in an outraged silence. Was there, then, no sanctity, no privacy, in married life? Was everything about her to be made common and profane? She hated Sir Henry at that moment. As long as he had remained an invoice accompanying the arrival of coveted possessions, she had felt only a vague uneasiness about him. Directly he became, after the wedding, a heavy bill demandingcash payment "to account rendered," she had found that the marriage market is not a very cheap one after all.Sir Henry was not the least chagrined at a discovery which might have tried the devotion of a more romantic lover."Why, Maddy," he said, "you are much too young and pretty to wear this sort of toggery. Leave 'em to the old dowagers, my dear;" and he dropped them into the fire.She saw them burn, but she made no sign. Presently, however, when he had left her, she began to cry feebly; for even feminine fortitude has its limits. She was in reality satisfied with her marriage on the whole, though she was wiping away a few natural tears at this moment. But in this class of union there is generally one item which is found almost intolerable, namely, the husband. He really was the only drawback inthis case. The furniture, the house, the southern aspect of the reception-rooms, everything else, was satisfactory. The park was handsomer than she had expected. And she had not known there was a silver dinner-service. It had been a love match as far as that was concerned. If Henry himself had only been different, Madeleine often reflected! If he had not been so red, and if he had had curly hair, or any hair at all! But whose lot has not some secret sorrow?So Madeleine cried a little, and then wiped her eyes, and fell to thinking of her gown for the fancy ball at Alvery next month. She called to mind Di's height and regal figure with a pang. Perhaps, after all, she had been unwise in asking her dear friend, whom it would be difficult to eclipse, for this particular ball. Madeleine was under the impression that she was "havingDi" out of good nature. This was her tame caged motive, kept for the inspection of others, especially of Di. Nevertheless there were others which were none the less genuine because they did not wait to have salt put on their tails, and invariably flew away at the approach of strangers.Madeleine had not remembered to be good-natured until a certain obstacle to the completion of her ball-party, as she intended it, had arisen. The subject of young men was one which she had approached with the utmost delicacy; for, according to Sir Henry, all young men—at least, all good-looking ones—were fools and oafs whom he was not going to have woundinghisbirds. She agreed with him entirely, but reminded him of the duchess's solemn injunction to bring a party of even numbers.Sir Henry at last gave in so far as to propose an elderly colonel. Madeleine inturn suggested Lord Hemsworth, who was allowed to be "a good sort," and was invited."Then we ought to have Miss Di Tempest, if we have Hemsworth," said Sir Henry, blowing like a grampus, as his manner was in moments of inspiration. "I'm quite a matchmaker now I'm married myself. Ask her to meet him, Maddy. She's your special pal, ain't she?"Madeleine felt that she required strength greater than her own to bear with a person who says "ain't" and "a good sort," and designates a lady-friend as a "pal."She pressed the silver knob of her pencil to her lips. There was, she remarked, no one whom she would like to have so much as Di; but Mr. Lumley was her next suggestion, and Sir Henry slapped himself on the leg, and said he was the very thing."We want one other man," said Madeleine,reflectively, after a few more had passed through the needle's eye of Sir Henry's criticism. "Let me see. Oh, there's Captain Tempest. He dances well.""I won't have him," said Sir Henry at once, his eyes assuming their most prawnlike expression. "You may have his cousin if you like, the owl with the jowl, as Lumley calls him—Tempest of Overleigh.""He is sure to be asked to the house itself, being a relation," said Madeleine, dropping the subject of Archie instantly. She did not recur to it again. But after their return home from the visit to the Hemsworths', at which she had met Di, she told her husband she had invited Di for the fancy ball, as he had wished her to do."Me?" said Sir Henry, reddening. "Lord bless me, what do I want with her?" And it was some time before he could be made to recollect what he had said nearly amonth ago about asking Di to meet Lord Hemsworth."You forget your own wishes more quickly than I do," she said, putting her hand in his.He did, by Jove, he did; and he bent over the little hand and kissed it, while she noticed how red the back of his neck was. When he became unusually apoplectic in appearance, as at this moment, Madeleine always caught a glimpse of herself as a young widow, and the idea softened her towards him. If he were once really gone, without any possibility of return, she felt that she could have said, "Poor Henry!""The only awkward part about having asked Di," said Madeleine, after a pause, "is that Mrs. Courtenay does not allow her to visit alone.""Well, my dear, ask Mrs. Courtenay. I like her. She has always been very civil to me."She had indeed."I don't like her very much myself," said Madeleine. "She is so worldly; and I think she has made Di so. And she would be the only older person. You know you decided it should be ayoungparty this time. It is very awkward Di not being able to come alone, at her age. She evidently wanted me to ask her brother to bring her, who, she almost told me, was anxious to meet Miss Crupps, the carpet heiress; but I did not quite like to ask him without your leave.""Ask him by all means," said Sir Henry, entirely oblivious of his former refusal. "After that poor little girl, is he? Well, we'll sit out together, and watch the lovemaking, eh?"Madeleine experienced a tremor wholly unmixed with compunction at gaining her point. She would have been aware, if she had read it in a book, that any one who hadacted as she had done, had departed from the truth in suggesting that Di could not visit alone. She would have felt also that it was reprehensible in the extreme to invite to her house a man who had secretly, though not without provocation, made love to her since her marriage.But just in the same way that what we regret as conceit in others we perceive to be a legitimate self-respect in ourselves, so Madeleine, as on previous occasions, "saw things very differently."She was incapable of what she called "a low view." She had often "frankly" told herself that she took a deep interest in Archie. She had put his initials against some of her favourite passages in her morocco manual. She prayed for him on his birthday, and sometimes, when she woke up and looked at her luminous cross at night. She believed that she had a great influencefor good over him which it was her duty to use. She was sincere in her wish to proselytize, but the sincerity of an insincere nature is like the kernel of a deaf nut; a mere shred of undeveloped fibre. What Madeleine wished to believe became a reality to her. Gratification of a very common form of vanity was a religious duty. She wrote to Archie with a clear conscience, and, when he accepted, had a box of autumn hats down from London.CHAPTER XII."Oh, Love's but a dance,Where Time plays the fiddle!See the couples advance,—Oh, Love's but a dance!A whisper, a glance,—'Shall we twirl down the middle?'Oh, Love's but a dance,Where Time plays the fiddle!"Austin Dobson.IIT was the night of the fancy dress ball.The carriages were already at the door, and could be heard crunching round and round upon the gravel. Sir Henry, all yeomanry red and gold, was having the bursting hooks and eyes at his throat altered in his wife's room. Something had to bedone to his belt, too. At last he went blushing downstairs before the cluster of maids with his sword under his arm. The guests, who had gone up to dress after an early dinner, were reappearing by degrees. Lord Hemsworth, in claret-coloured coat and long Georgian waistcoat and tie-wig, came down, handsome and quiet as usual, with his young sister, whose imagination had stopped short at cotton-wool snowflakes on a tulle skirt. An impecunious young man in a red hunt coat rushed in, hooted on the stairs by Mr. Lumley for having come without a wedding garment. Madeleine sailed down in Watteau costume. Two married ladies followed in Elizabethan ones. Presently Archie made his appearance, a dream of beauty in white satin from head to foot, as the Earl of Leicester, his curling hair, fair to whiteness, looking like the wig which it was not. Every one, men and women alike,turned to look at him; and Mr. Lumley, following in harlequin costume, was quite overlooked, until he turned a somersault, saying, "Here we are again!" whereat Sir Henry instantly lost a hook and eye in a cackle of admiration."We ought to be starting," said Madeleine. "We are all down now.""Not quite all," said Mr. Lumley, sinking on one knee, as Di came in crowned and sceptred, in a green and silver gown edged with ermine.Lord Hemsworth drew in his breath. Madeleine's face fell."Good gracious, Di!" she said, with a very thin laugh. "This is dressing up indeed!"The party, already late, got under way, Mr. Lumley, of course, calling in falsetto to each carriage in turn not to go without him, and then refusing to enter any vehicle inwhich, as he expressed it, Miss Tempest was not already an ornamental fixture."This is getting beyond a joke," said Lord Hemsworth, as a burst of song issued from the carriage leaving the door, and the lamp inside showed Di's crowned head, Sir Henry's violet complexion, and the gutta-percha face of the warbling Mr. Lumley.Di sat very silent in her corner, and after a time, as the drive was a long one, the desultory conversation dropped, and Sir Henry fell into a nasal slumber, from which, as Madeleine was in another carriage, no one attempted to rouse him.Di shut her eyes as a safeguard against being spoken to, and her mind went back to the subject which had been occupying much of her thoughts since the previous evening, namely, the fact that she should meet John at the ball. She knew he would be there, for she had seen him get out ofthe train at Alvery station the afternoon before.As she had found on a previous occasion, when they had suddenly been confronted with each other at Doncaster races, to meet John had ceased to be easy to her—became more difficult every time.Possibly John had found it as difficult to speak to Di as she had found it to receive him. But however that may have been, it would certainly have been impossible to divine that he was awaiting the arrival of any one to-night with the faintest degree of interest. He did not take his stand where it would be obvious that he could command a view of the door through which the guests entered. He had seen others do that on previous occasions, and had observed that the effect was not happy. Nevertheless, from the bay window where he was watching the dancing, the guests as they arrived were visible to him."He! he!" said Lord Frederick, joining him. "Such a row in the men's cloak-room! Young Talbot has come as Little Bo-Peep, and the men would not have him in their room; said it was improper, and tried to hustle him into the ladies' room. He is still swearing in his ulster in the passage. Why aren't you dancing?""I can't. My left arm is weak since I burned it in the spring.""Well," rejoined Lord Frederick, who as a French marquis, with cane and snuff-box, was one of the best-dressed figures in the room, "you don't miss much. Onlookers see most of the game. Look at that fairy twirling with the little man in the kilt. Their skirts are just the same length. The worst part of this species of entertainment is that one cuts one's dearest friends. Some one asked me just now whether the 'Mauvaise Langue' was here to-night. Did notrecognize the wolf in sheep's clothing. More arrivals. A Turk and a Norwegian peasant, and a man in a smock frock. And—now—what on earth is the creature in blue and red, with a female to match?""Otter-hounds," suggested John."Is it possible? Never saw it before. There goes Freemantle as a private in the Blues, saluting as he is introduced, instead of bowing. What a fund of humour the youth of the present day possess! Who is that bleached earwig he is dancing with?""I think it is Miss Crupps, the heiress.""H'm! Might have known it. That is the sort of little pill that no one takes unless it is very much gilt. Here comes the Verelst party at last. Lady Verelst has put herself together well. I would not mind buying her at my valuation and selling her at her own. She hates me, that little painted saint. I always cultivate a genuinesaint. I make a point of it. They may look deuced dowdy down here—they generally do, though I believe it is only their wings under their clothes; but they will probably form the aristocracy up yonder, and it is as well to know them beforehand. But Lady Verelst is a sham, and I hate shams. I am a sham myself. He! he! When last I met her she talked pious, and implied intimacy with the Almighty, till at last I told her that it was the vulgarest thing in life to be always dragging in your swell acquaintance. He! he! I shall go and speak to her directly she has done introducing her party. Mrs. Dundas—and—I don't know the other woman. Who is the girl in white?""Miss Everard.""What! Hemsworth's sister? Then he will be here too, probably. I like Hemsworth. There's no more harm in that youngman than there is in a tablet of Pears' soap. A crowned head next. Why, it's Di Tempest. By —— she is handsomer every time I see her! If that girl knew how to advertise herself, she might become a professional beauty.""Heaven forbid!" said John, involuntarily, watching Di with the intense concentration of one who has long pored over memory's dim portrait, and now corrects it by the original.Lord Frederick did not see the look. For once something escaped him. He too was watching Di, who with the remainder of the Verelst party was being drifted towards them by a strong current of fresh arrivals in their wake.The usual general recognition and non-recognition peculiar to fancy balls ensued, in which old acquaintances looked blankly at each other, gasped each other's names, and then shook hands effusively; amid whichone small greeting between two people who had seen and recognized each other from the first instant took place, and was over in a moment."I cannot recognize any one," said Di, her head held a shade higher than usual, looking round the room, and saying to herself, "He would not have spoken to me if he could have helped it.""Some of the people are unrecognizable," said John, with originality equal to hers, and stung by the conviction that she had tried to avoid shaking hands with him.The music struck up suddenly as if it were a new idea."Are you engaged for this dance?" said Mr. Lumley, flying to her side."Yes," said Di with decision."So am I," said he, and was gone again."Dance?" said aSporting Times, rushingup in turn, and shooting out the one word like a pea from a pop-gun."Thanks, I should like to, but I am not allowed," said Di. "My grandmother is very particular. If you had been theSunday at HomeI should have been charmed."The "Pink 'un" expostulated vehemently, and said he would have come as theChurch Timesif he had only known; but Di remained firm.John walked away, pricking himself with his little dagger, the sheath of which had somehow got lost, and watched the knot of men who gradually gathered round Di. Presently she moved away with Lord Frederick in the direction of Madeleine, who had installed herself at the further end of the room among thefenders, as our latter-day youth gracefully designates the tiaras of the chaperones.John was seized upon and introduced toan elderly minister with an order, who told him he had known his father, and began to sound him as to his political views. John, who was inured to this form of address, answered somewhat vaguely, for at that moment Di began to dance. She had a partner worthy of her in the shape of a sedate young Russian, resplendent in the white-and-gold uniform of the imperialGardes à cheval.Lord Frederick gravitated back to John. No young man among the former's large acquaintance was given the benefit of his experience more liberally than John. Lord Frederick took an interest in him which was neither returned nor repelled."Elver is down at last," he said. "It seems he had to wait till his mother's maid could be spared to sew him into his clothes. It is a pity you are not dancing, John. You might dance with your cousin. She andPrince Blazinski made a splendid couple. What a crowd of moths round that candle! I hope you are not one of them. It is not the candle that gets singed. Another set of arrivals. Look at Carruthers coming in with a bouquet. Cox of theMonarchstill, I suppose. He can't dance with it; no, he has given it to his father to hold. Supper at last. I must go and take some one in."John took Miss Everard in to supper. In spite of her brother's and Di's efforts, she had not danced much. She did not find him so formidable as she expected, and before supper was over had told him all about her doves, and how the grey one sat on her shoulder, and how she loved poetry better than anything in the world, except "Donovan." John proved a sympathetic listener. He in his turn confided to her his difficulty in conveying soup over the edge of his ruff; and after providing her with a pink cream,judging with intuition unusual to his sex that a pink cream is ever more acceptable to young ladyhood than a white one, he took her back to the ball-room. The crowd had thinned. The kilt and the fairy and a few other couples were careering wildly in open space. John looked round in vain for Madeleine, to whom he could deliver up his snowflake, and catching sight of Mrs. Dundas on the chaperon's dais, made in her direction. Di, who was sitting with Mrs. Dundas, suddenly perceived them coming up the room together. What was it, what could it be, that indescribable feeling that went through her like a knife as she saw Miss Everard on John's arm, smiling at something he was saying to her? Had they been at supper together all this long time?"What a striking face your cousin has!" said Mrs. Dundas. "I do not wonder that people ask who he is. I used to think himrather alarming, but Miss Everard does not seem to find him so.""He can be alarming," said Di, lightly. "You should see him when he is discussing his country's weal, or welcoming his guests.""Why did I say that?" she asked herself the moment the words were out of her mouth. "It's ill-natured and it's not true. Why did I say it?"Mrs. Dundas laughed."It's the old story," she said. "One never sees the virtues of one's relations. Now, as he is notmyfirst cousin, I am able to perceive that he is a very remarkable person, with a jaw that means business. There is tenacity and strength of purpose in his face. He would be a terrible person to oppose."Di laughed, but she quailed inwardly."I am told he is immensely run after," continued Mrs. Dundas. "I dare say youknow," in a whisper, "that the duchess wants him for Lady Alice, and theysayhe has given her encouragement, but I don't believe it. Anyhow, her mother is making her read up political economy and Bain, poor girl. It must be an appalling fate to marry a great intellect. I am thankful to say Charlie only had two ideas in his head; one was chemical manures, and the other was to marry me. Well, Miss Everard. Lady Verelst is at supper, but I will extend a wing over you till she returns. Here comes a crowd from the supper-room. Now, Miss Tempest, do go in. You owned you were hungry a minute ago, though you refused the tragic entreaties of the Turk and the stage villain.""I was afraid," said Di; "for though the villain is my esteemed friend in private life, I know his wide hat or the turban of the infidel would catch in my crown and dragit from my head. I wish I had not come so regally. I enjoyed sewing penny rubies into my crown, and making the ermine out of an old black muff and some rabbit-fur; but—uneasy is the head that wears a crown.""I am very harmless and inaggressive," said John, in his most level voice. "The only person I prick with my little dagger is myself. If you are hungry, I think you may safely go in to supper with me.""Very well," said Di, rising and taking his offered arm. "I am too famished to refuse.""She is taller than he is," said Miss Everard, as they went together down the rapidly filling room."No, my dear; it is only her crown. They are exactly the same height."No one is more useful in everyday lifethan the man, seldom a rich man, who can command two sixpences, and can in an emergency produce a threepenny bit and some coppers. The capitalist with his halfcrown is nowhere—for the time.In conversation, small change is everything. Who does not know the look of the clever man in society, conscious of a large banking account, but uncomfortably conscious also that, like Goldsmith, he has not a sixpence of ready money? And who has not envied the fool jingling his few halfpence on a tombstone or anywhere, to the satisfaction of himself and every one else?Thrice-blessed is small-talk.But between some persons it is an impossibility, though each may have a very respectable stock of his own. Like different coinages, they will not amalgamate. Di and John had not wanted any in talking to each other—till now. And now, in their hour ofneed, to the alarm of both, they found they were destitute. After a short mental struggle they succumbed into the abyss of the commonplace, the only neutral ground on which those who have once been open and sincere with each other can still meet—to the certain exasperation of both.John was dutifully attentive. He procured a fresh bottle of champagne for her, and an unnibbled roll, and made suitable remarks at intervals; but her sense of irritation increased. Something in his manner annoyed her. And yet it was only the same courteous, rather expressionless manner that she remembered was habitual to him towards others. Now that it was gone she realized that there had once been a subtle difference in his voice and bearing to herself. She felt defrauded of she knew not what, and the wing of cold pheasant before her loomed larger and larger, till it seemed to stretchover the whole plate. Why on earth had she said she was hungry? And why had he brought her to the large table, where there was so much light and noise, and where she was elbowed by an enormous hairy Buffalo Bill, when she had seen as she came in that one of the little tables for two was at that instant vacant? She forgot that when she first caught sight of it she had said within herself that she would never forgive him if he had the bad taste to entrap her into atête-à-têteby taking her there.But he had shown at once that he had no such intention. Was this dignified, formal man, with his air of distinction, and his harsh immobile face, and his black velvet dress,—was this stranger really the John with whom she had been on such easy terms six weeks ago; the John who, pale and determined, had measured swords with her in the dusk of a September evening?And as she sat beside him in the brilliant light, amid the Babel of tongues, a voice in her heart said suddenly, "That was not the end; that was only the beginning—only the beginning."Her eyes met his, fixed inquiringly upon her. He was only offering her some grapes, but it appeared to her that he must have heard the words, and a sense of impotent terror seized her, as the terror of one who, wrestling for his life, finds at the first throw that he is overmatched.She rose hastily, and asked to go back to the ball-room. He complied at once, but did not speak. They went, a grave and silent couple, through the hall and down the gallery."Have I annoyed you?" he said at last, as they neared the ball-room.She did not answer."I mean, have I done anything more that has annoyed you?""Nothing more, thanks.""I am glad," said John. "I feared I had. Of course, I would not have asked you to go in to supper with me if Mrs. Dundas had not obliged me. I intended to ask you to do so, when you could have made some excuse for refusing if you did not wish it. I was sorry to force your hand.""You will never do that," said Di, to her own astonishment. It seemed to her that she was constrained by a power stronger than herself to defy him.She felt him start."We will take another turn," he said instantly; and before she had the presence of mind to resist, they had turned and were walking slowly down the gallery again between the rows of life-size figures of knights and chargers in armour, which loomed gigantic in the feeble light. A wave of music broke in the distance, and the fewcouples sitting in recesses rose and passed them on their way back to the ball-room, leaving the gallery deserted.A peering moon had laid a faint criss-cross whiteness on the floor.The place took a new significance.Each was at first too acutely conscious of being alone with the other to speak. She wondered if he could feel how her hand trembled on his arm, and he whether it was possible she did not hear the loud hammering of his heart. Either would have died rather than have betrayed their emotion to the other."You tell me I shall never force your hand," he repeated slowly at last. "No, indeed, I trust I never shall. But when, may I ask, have I shown any intention of doing so?"Di had put herself so palpably and irretrievably in the wrong, that she had norefuge left but silence. She was horror-struck by his repetition of the words which her lips, but surely not she herself, had spoken."If you ever marry me," said John, "it will be of your own accord. If you don't, we shall both miss happiness—you as well as I, for we are meant for each other. Most people are so constituted that they can marry whom they please, but you and I have no choice. We have a claim upon each other. I recognize yours, with thankfulness. I did not know life held anything so good. You ignore mine, and wilfully turn away from it. I don't wonder. I am not a man whom any woman would choose, much lessyou. It is natural on your part to dislike me—at first. In the mean while you need not distress yourself by telling me so. I am under no delusion on that point."His voice was firm and gentle. If it hadbeen cold, Di's pride would have flamed up in a moment. As it was, its gentleness, under great and undeserved provocation, made her writhe with shame. She spoke impulsively."But Iamdistressed, I can't help being so, at having spoken so harshly; no—worsethan harshly, so unpardonably.""There is no question of pardon between you and me," said John, turning to look at her with the grave smile that seemed for a moment to bring back her old friend to her; but only for a moment. His eyes contradicted it. "I know you have never forgiven me for telling you that I loved you, but nevertheless you see I have not asked pardon yet, though I had not intended to annoy you by speaking of it again—at present.""No," said Di, eagerly. "But that is just it. It was my own fault this time. Ibrought it on myself. But—but I can't help knowing—I feel directly I see you that you are still thinking of it. And then I become angry, and say dreadful things like——""Exactly," said John, nodding."Because I—not only because I am ill-tempered, but because though I do like being liked, still I don't want you or any one to make a mistake, or go on making it. It doesn't seem fair.""Not if it really is a mistake.""It is in this instance.""Not on my part."There was a short silence. Di felt as if she had walked up against a stone wall."John," she said with decision. "Believe me. I sometimes mean what I say, and I mean it now. I really and truly am a person who knows my own mind.""So do I," said John.Rather a longer silence."And—and oh, John! Don't you see how wretched, how foolish it is, our being on these absurd formal terms? Have you forgotten what friends we used to be? I have not. It makes me angry still when I think how you have taken yourself away for nothing, and how all the pleasure is gone out of meeting you or talking to you. I don't think you half knew how much I liked you.""Di," said John, stopping short, and facing her with indignation in his eyes, "I desire that you will never again tell me youlikeme. I really cannot stand it. Let us go back to the ball-room."
"Before Jehovah's awful throne,Ye nations bow-wow-wow with sacred joy."
"Before Jehovah's awful throne,Ye nations bow-wow-wow with sacred joy."
When the clergyman had blessed his flock, and the flock had hurried with his blessing into the open air, Di and Johnremained behind to look at the nibbled old stone font, engraved with tangled signs, and unknown beasts with protruding unknown tongues, where little Tempests had whimpered and protested against a Christianity they did not understand. The aisle and chancel were paved with worn lettered stones, obliterated memorials of forgotten Tempests who had passed at midnight with flaring torches from their first home on the crag to their last in the valley. The walls bore record too. John had put up a tablet to his predecessor. It contained only the name, and date of birth and death, and underneath the single sentence—
"Until the day break, and the shadows flee away."
Di read the words in silence, and then turned the splendour of her deep glance upon him. Since when had the bare fact of meeting her eyes become so exceedingsharp and sweet, such an epoch in the day? John writhed inwardly under their gentle scrutiny.
"You are very loyal," she said.
He felt a sudden furious irritation against her which took him by surprise, and then turned to scornful anger against himself. He led the way out of the church into the sad September sunshine, and talked of indifferent subjects till they reached the Castle. And after luncheon John went to the library and stared at the shelves again, and Miss Fane ambled and grunted to church, and Di sat with her grandmother.
There are some acts of self-sacrifice for which the performers will never in this world obtain the credit they deserve. Mrs. Courtenay, who was addicted to standing proxy for Providence, and was not afraid to take upon herself responsibilities which belong to Omniscience alone, had not hesitated to performsuch an act, in the belief that the cause justified the means. Indeed, in her eyes a good cause justified many sorts and conditions of means.
All Saturday and half Sunday she had repressed the pangs of a healthy appetite, and had partaken only of the mutton-broth and splintered toast of invalidism. With a not ill-grounded dread lest Di's quick eyes should detect a subterfuge, she had gone so far as to take "heart-drops" three times a day from the hand of her granddaughter, and had been careful to have recourse to her tin of arrowroot biscuits only in the strictest privacy. But now that Sunday afternoon had come, she felt that she could safely relax into convalescence. The blinds were drawn up, and she was established in an armchair by the window.
"You seem really better," said Di. "I should hardly have known you had had oneof your attacks. You generally look so pale afterwards."
"It has been very slight," said Mrs. Courtenay, blushing faintly. "I took it in time. I shall be able to travel to-morrow. I suppose you and Miss Fane went to church this morning?"
"Miss Fane would not go, but John and I did."
Mrs. Courtenay closed her eyes. Virtue may be its own reward, but it is gratifying when it is not the only one.
"Granny," said Di, suddenly, "I never knew, till John told me, that my mother had been engaged to his father."
"What has John been raking up those old stories for?"
"I don't think he raked up anything. He seemed to think I knew all about it. He was showing me my mother's miniature which he had found among his father'spapers. I always supposed that the reason you never would talk about her was because you had felt her death too much."
"I was glad when she died," said Mrs. Courtenay.
"Was she unhappy, then? Father speaks of her rather sadly when he does mention her, as if he had been devoted to her, but she had not cared much for him, and had felt aggrieved at his being poor. He once said he had many faults, but that was the one she could never forgive. And he told me that when she died he was away on business, and she did not leave so much as a note or a message for him."
"It is quite true; she did not," said Mrs. Courtenay, in a suppressed voice. "I have never talked to you about your mother, Di, because I knew if I did I should prejudice you against your father, and I have no right to do that."
"I think," said Di, "that now I know a little you had better tell me the rest, or I shall only imagine things were worse than the reality."
So Mrs. Courtenay told her; told her of the little daughter who had been born to her in the first desolation of her widowhood, round whom she had wrapped in its entirety the love that many women divide between husband and sons and daughters.
She told Di of young Mr. Tempest, then just coming forward in political life, between whom and herself a friendship had sprung up in the days when he had been secretary to her brother, then in the Ministry. The young man was constantly at her house. He was serious, earnest, diffident, ambitious. Di reached the age of seventeen. Mrs. Courtenay saw the probable result, and hoped for it. With some persons to hope for anything is to remove obstacles from the path of its achievement.
"And yet, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, "I can't reproach myself. Theyweresuited to each other. It is as clear to me now as it was then. She did not love him, but I knew she would; and she had seen no one else. And he worshipped her. I threw them together, but I did not press her to accept him. She did accept him, and we went down to Overleigh together. She had—this room. I remembered it directly I saw it again. The engagement had not been formally given out, and the wedding was not to have been till the following spring on account of her youth. I think Mr. Tempest and I were the two happiest people in the world. I felt such entire confidence in him, and I was thankful she should not run the gauntlet of all that a beautiful girl is exposed to in society. She was as innocent as a child of ten, and as unconscious of her beauty—which, poor child! was very great.
"And then he—your father—came to Overleigh. Ten days afterwards they went away together, and I—I who had never been parted from her for a night since her birth—I never saw her again, except once across a room at a party, until four years afterwards, when her first child was born. I went to her then. I tried not to go, for she did not send for me; but she was the only child I had ever had, and I remembered my own loneliness when she was born. And the pain of staying away became too great, and I went. And—she was quite changed. She was not the least like my child, except about the eyes; and she was taller. Mr. Tempest never forgave her, because he loved her; but I forgave her at last, because I loved her more than he did. I saw her often after that. She used to tell me when your father would be away—and he was much away—and then I went to her. Iwould not meethim. We never spoke of her married life. It did not bear talking about, for she had really loved him, and it took him a long time to break her of it. We talked of the baby, and servants, and the price of things, for she was very poor. She was loyal to her husband. She never spoke about him except once. I remember that day. It was one of the last before she died. I found her sitting by the fire reading 'Consuelo.' I sat down by her, and we remained a long time without speaking. Often we sat in silence together. You have not come to the places on the road, my dear, when somehow words are no use any more, and the only poor comfort left is to be with some one who understands and says nothing. When you do, you will find silence one degree more bearable than speech.
"At last she turned to the book, and pointed to a sentence in it. I can see thepage now, and the tall French print. 'Le caractère de cet homme entraîne les actions de sa vie. Jamais tu ne le changeras.'
"'I think that is true,' she said. 'Some characters seem to be settled beforehand, like a weathercock with its leaded tail. They cannot really change, because they are always changing. Nothing teaches them. Happiness, trouble, love, and hate bring no experience. They swing round to every wind that blows on one pivot always—themselves. There was a time when I am afraid I tired God with one name. "Jamais tu ne le changeras." No, never. One changes one's self. That is all. And now, instead of reproaching others, I reproach myself—bitterly—bitterly.'
"And she never begged my pardon. She once said, when I found her very miserable, that it was right that one who had made others suffer should suffer too. But thosewere the only times she alluded to the past, and I never did. I did not go to her to reproach her. The kind of people who are cut by reproaches have generally reproached themselves more harshly than any one else can. She had, I know. It would have been better if she had been less reserved, and if she could have taken more interest in little things. But she did not seem able to. Some women, and they are the happy ones, can comfort themselves in a loveless marriage with pretty note-paper, and tying up the legs of chairs with blue ribbon. She could not do that, and I think she suffered more in consequence. Those little feminine instincts are not given us for nothing.
"She never gave in until she knew she was dying. Then she tried to speak, but she sank rapidly. She said something about you, and then smiled when her voice failed her, and gave up the attempt. I think shewas so glad to go that she did not mind anything else much. They held the baby to her as a last chance, and made it cry. Oh, Di, how you cried! And she trembled very much just for a moment, and then did not seem to take any more notice, though they put its little hand against her face. I think the end came all the quicker. It seemed too good to be true at first....
"Don't cry, my dear. Young people don't know where trouble lies. They think it is in external calamity, and sickness and death. But one does not find it so. The only real troubles are those which we cause each other through the affections. Those whom we love chasten us. I never shed a single tear for her when she died. There had been too many during her life, for I loved her better than anything in the world except my husband, who died when he was twenty-five and I was twenty-two. You often remindme of him. You are a very dear child to me. She said she hoped you would make up a little to me; and you have—not a little. I have brought you up differently. I saw my mistake with her. I sheltered her too much. I hope I have not run into the opposite extreme with you. I have allowed you more liberty than is usual, and I have encouraged you to look at life for yourself, and to think and act for yourself, and learn by your own experience. And now go and bathe your eyes, and see if you can find me Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyám.' I think I saw it last in the morning-room. John and I were talking about it on Friday. I dare say he will know where it is."
"Si tu ne m'aimes pas moi je t'aime."
"Si tu ne m'aimes pas moi je t'aime."
IIT was the time of afternoon tea. Miss Fane rolled off the sofa, and with the hydraulic sniff that can temporarily suspend the laws of nature, proceeded to pour out tea. Presently John and the dogs came in, and Di, who had found Mrs. Courtenay's book without his assistance, followed. John had not the art of small-talk. Miss Fane, who was in the habit of attempting the simultaneous absorption of liquid and farinaceous nutriment with a perseverance not marked by success, was necessarily silent, save when a carroway seed took the wrongturn. She seldom spoke in the presence of food, any more than others do in church. Few things apart from the Bull of Bashan commanded Miss Fane's undivided homage, but food never failed to, though it was reserved for plovers' eggs and the roe of the sturgeon to stir the latent emotion of her nature to its depths.
The dogs did their tricks. Lindo contrived to swallow all his own and half Fritz's portion, but, fortunately for the cause of justice, during a muffin-scattering choke on Lindo's part, Fritz's long red tongue was able to glean together fragments of what he imagined he had lost sight of for ever.
Di inquired whether there were evening service.
"Evening service at seven," said Miss Fane; "supper at quarter past eight."
"Do not go to church again," said John. "Come for a walk with me."
Di readily agreed. It was very pleasant to her to be with John. She had begun to feel that he and she were near akin. He was her only first cousin. The nearness of their relationship, accounting as it did in her mind for a growing intimacy, prevented any suspicion of that intimacy having sprung from another source.
They walked together through the forest in the still opal light of the waning day. Through the enlacing fingers of the trees the western sun made ladders of light. Breast-high among the bracken they went, disturbing the deer; across the heather, under the whisper of the pines, down to the steel-white reeded pools below.
They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and a faint air came across the water from the trees on the further side, with a message to the trees on this. Neither talked much. The lurking sadness in the airjust touched and soothed the lurking sadness in Di's mind. She did not notice John's silence, for he was often silent. She wound a blade of grass round her finger, and then unwound it again. John watched her do it. He had noticed before, as a peculiarity of Di's, not observable in other women, that whatever she did was interesting. She asked some question about the lower pool gleaming before them through the trunks of the trees, and he answered absently the reverse of what was true.
"Then perhaps we had better be turning back," she said.
He rose, and they went back another way, climbing slowly up and up by a little winding track through steepest forest places. Many burrs left their native stems to accompany them on their way. They showed to great advantage on Di's primrose cotton gown. At last they reached the top of therocky ridge, and she sat down, out of breath, under a group of silver firs, and, taking off her gloves, began idly to pick the burrs one by one off the folds of her gown.
There was no hurry. He sat down by her, and watched her hands. She put the burrs on a stone near her.
They were sitting on the topmost verge of the crag, and the forest fell away in a shimmer of green beneath their feet to the pools below, and then climbed the other side of the valley and melted into the purple of the Overleigh and Oulston moors. Far away, the steep ridge of Hambleton and the headland of Sutton Brow stood out against the evening sky. Some Tempest of bygone days had dared to perpetrate a Greek temple in a clearing among the silver firs where they were sitting, but time had effaced that desecration of one of God's high places by transforming it to a lichened ruin ofscattered stones. It was on one of these scattered stones that Di was raising a little cairn of burrs.
"Forty-one," she said at last. "You have not even begun your toilet yet, John."
No answer.
The sun was going down unseen behind a bar of cloud. A purple light was on the hills. Their faces showed that they saw the glory, but the twilight deepened over all the nearer land. Slowly the sun passed below the leaden bar, and looked back once more in full heaven, and drowned the world in light. Then with dying strength he smote the leaden bar to one long line of quivering gold, and sank dimly, redly, to the enshrouding west. All colour died. The hills were gone. The land lay dark. But far across the sky, from north to south, the line of light remained.
Di had watched the sunset alone. Johnhad not seen it. His eyes were fixed on her calm face with the western glow upon it. She did not even notice that he was looking at her. One of her ungloved hands lay on her knee, so near to him yet so immeasurably far away. Could he stretch across the gulf to touch it? His expressionless face took some meaning at last. He leaned a little towards her, and laid his hand on hers.
She started violently, and dropped her sunset thoughts like a surprised child its flowers. Even a less vain man than John might have been cut to the quick by the sudden horrified bewilderment of her face, and of the dazzled light-blinded eyes which turned to peer at him with such unseeing distress.
"Oh, John!" she said, "not you;" and she put her other hand quickly for one second on his.
"Yes," he said, "that is just it."
Her mouth quivered painfully.
"I thought," she said, "we were—surely wearefriends."
"No," said John, mastering the insane emotion which had leapt within him at the touch of her hand. "We never were, and we never shall be. I will have nothing to do with any friendship of yours. I'm not a beggar to be shaken off with coppers. I want everything or nothing."
Her manner changed. Her self-possession came back.
"I am sorry it must be nothing," she said gently, and she tried quietly but firmly to withdraw her hand.
His grasp on it tightened ever so little, but in an unmistakable manner, and she instantly gave up the attempt.
A splendid colour mounted slowly to her face. She drew herself up. Her lightning-bright intrepid eyes met his without flinching.They looked hard at each other in the waning light. Once again they seemed to measure swords as at the moment when they first met. Each felt the other formidable. There was no slightest shred of disguise between them.
There was a breathless silence.
Di went through a frightful revulsion of mind. The sunset and the light along the sky seemed to have betrayed her. These pleasant days had been in league against her. And now, goaded by the grasp of his hand on hers, her mind made one headlong rush at the goal towards which these accomplices had been luring her. Where were they leading her? Glamour dropped dead. Marriage remained. To become this man's wife; to merge her life in his; to give up everything into the hand that still held hers, the pressure of which was like a claim! He had only laid his hand upon her hand, but itseemed to her that he had laid it upon her soul. Her whole being rose up against him in sudden passionate antagonism horrible to bear. And all the time she knew instinctively that he was stronger than she.
John saw and understood that mental struggle almost with compassion, yet with an exultant sense of power over her. One conviction of the soul ever remains unshaken, that whom we understand is ours to have and to hold.
He deliberately released her hand. She did not make the slightest movement at regaining possession of it.
John wrestled with his voice, and forced it back, harsh and unfamiliar, to do his bidding.
"Di," he said, "I believe in truth even between men and women. I know what you are feeling about me at this moment. Well, that, even that, is better than a mistake; and you were making one. You had not thefaintest suspicion of what has been the one object of my life since the day I first met you. The fault was mine, not yours. You could not see what was not on the surface to be seen. You would have gone on for the remainder of your natural life liking me in a way I—I cannot tolerate, if I had not—done as I did. I have not the power like some men of showing their feelings. I can't say the little things and do the little things that come to others by instinct. My instinct is to keep things to myself. I always have—till now."
Silence again; a silence which seemed to grow in a moment to such colossal dimensions that it was hardly credible a voice would have power to break it.
The twilight had advanced suddenly upon them. The young pheasants crept and called among the bracken. The night-birds passed swift and silent as sudden thoughts.
Di struggled with an unreasoning, furious anger, which, like a fiery horse, took her whole strength to control.
"I love you," said John, "and I shall go on loving you; and it is better you should know it."
And as he spoke she became aware that her anger was but a little thing beside his.
"What is the good of telling me," she said, "what I—what you know I—don't wish to hear?"
"What good?" said John, fiercely, his face working. "Great God! do you imagine I have put myself through the torture of making myself intolerable to you for no purpose? Do you think that you can dismiss me with a few angry words? What good? The greatest good in the world, which I would turn heaven and earth to win; which please God I will win."
Di became as white as he. He was toostrong, this man, with his set face, and clenched trembling hand. She was horribly frightened, but she kept a brave front. She turned towards him and would have spoken, but her lips only moved.
"You need not speak," he said more gently. "You cannot refuse what you have not been asked for. I ask nothing of you. Do you understand?Nothing.When I ask it will be time enough to refuse. It is getting late. Let us go home."
"Those who have called the world profane have succeeded in making it so."—J. H. Thom.
"Those who have called the world profane have succeeded in making it so."—J. H. Thom.
TTHE dreams of youth and love so frequently fade unfulfilled into "the light of common day," that it is a pleasure to be able to record that Madeleine saw the greater part of hers realized. She was received with what she termedéclatin her new neighbourhood. She remarked with complacency that everybody made much too much of her; that she had been quite touched by the enthusiasm of her reception. It was an ascertained fact that she would open the hunt ball with the President—apoint on which her maiden meditation had been much exercised. The Duchess of Southark was among the first to call upon her. If that lady's principal motive in doing so was curiosity to see what kind of wife Sir Henry, or, as he was called in his own county, "the Solicitor-General," had at length procured, Madeleine was comfortably unaware of the fact. After that single call, the duration of which was confined to nine minutes, Madeleine spoke of the duchess as "kindness and cordiality itself."
She was invited to stay at Alvery, and afterwards to fill her house for a fancy ball, in October, in honour of the coming of age of Lord Elver, the duke's eldest son and chief thorn in the flesh; a young man of great promise "when you got to know him," as Madeleine averred, in which case few shared that advantage with her.
Other invitations poured in. The neighbourhood was really surprised at the grace and beauty of the bride—considering. It was soon rumoured that she was a saint as well; that she read prayers every morning at Cantalupe, which the stablemen were expected to attend; and that she taught in the Sunday school. The ardent young vicar of the parish, who had hitherto languished unsupported and misunderstood at Sir Henry's door, in the flapping draperies that so well become the Church militant, was enthusiastic about her. She was what he called "a true woman." Those who use this expression best know what it means. Processions, monster candles, crucifixes, and other ingredients of the pharmacopœia of religion, swam before his mental vision. The little illegal side-altar, to which his two "crosses," namely, the churchwardens, had objected, but without which his soul couldnot rest in peace, was reinstated after a conversation with Madeleine. A promise on that lady's part to embroider an altar-cloth for the same was noised abroad.
Sir Henry was jubilant at his wife's popularity, which lost nothing from her own comments on it. Although nearly six months had elapsed since his marriage, he was still in a state of blind adoration—an adoration so blind that none of the ordinary events by which disillusion begins had any power to affect him.
He was not conscious that once or twice during the season in London he had been duped; that the jealousy which had flamed up so suddenly against Archie Tempest had more grounds than the single note he found in his wife's pocket, when in a fit of clumsy fondness he had turned out all its contents on her knee, solely to cogitate and wonder over them. He had a habit which triedher more than his slow faculties had any idea of, of examining Madeleine's belongings. His admiring curiosity had no suspicion in it. He liked to look at them solely because they were hers.
One day, shortly after their arrival at Cantalupe, when he was sitting in stolid inconvenient sympathy in her room, whither she had vainly retreated from him on the plea of a headache, he occupied himself by opening the drawers of her dressing-table one after the other, investigating with aboriginal interest small boxes of hairpins, curling-irons, and that various assortment of feminine gear which the hairdresser elegantly designates as "toilet requisites." At last he peeped into a box where, carefully arranged side by side, were the dearest of curls on tortoiseshell combs which he had often seen on his wife's head, and some smaller much becrimped bodies which filledhim with wondering dislike—hair caricatured—frisettes.
"Whatareyou doing?" said Madeleine, faintly, lying on the sofa with her back to him, holding her salts to her nose. Oh, if he would only go away, this large dreadful man, and leave her half an hour in peace, without hearing him clear his throat and sniff! On the contrary, he came and sat down by her chuckling, holding the curls and frisettes in his thick hands. She dropped her smelling-bottle and looked at them in an outraged silence. Was there, then, no sanctity, no privacy, in married life? Was everything about her to be made common and profane? She hated Sir Henry at that moment. As long as he had remained an invoice accompanying the arrival of coveted possessions, she had felt only a vague uneasiness about him. Directly he became, after the wedding, a heavy bill demandingcash payment "to account rendered," she had found that the marriage market is not a very cheap one after all.
Sir Henry was not the least chagrined at a discovery which might have tried the devotion of a more romantic lover.
"Why, Maddy," he said, "you are much too young and pretty to wear this sort of toggery. Leave 'em to the old dowagers, my dear;" and he dropped them into the fire.
She saw them burn, but she made no sign. Presently, however, when he had left her, she began to cry feebly; for even feminine fortitude has its limits. She was in reality satisfied with her marriage on the whole, though she was wiping away a few natural tears at this moment. But in this class of union there is generally one item which is found almost intolerable, namely, the husband. He really was the only drawback inthis case. The furniture, the house, the southern aspect of the reception-rooms, everything else, was satisfactory. The park was handsomer than she had expected. And she had not known there was a silver dinner-service. It had been a love match as far as that was concerned. If Henry himself had only been different, Madeleine often reflected! If he had not been so red, and if he had had curly hair, or any hair at all! But whose lot has not some secret sorrow?
So Madeleine cried a little, and then wiped her eyes, and fell to thinking of her gown for the fancy ball at Alvery next month. She called to mind Di's height and regal figure with a pang. Perhaps, after all, she had been unwise in asking her dear friend, whom it would be difficult to eclipse, for this particular ball. Madeleine was under the impression that she was "havingDi" out of good nature. This was her tame caged motive, kept for the inspection of others, especially of Di. Nevertheless there were others which were none the less genuine because they did not wait to have salt put on their tails, and invariably flew away at the approach of strangers.
Madeleine had not remembered to be good-natured until a certain obstacle to the completion of her ball-party, as she intended it, had arisen. The subject of young men was one which she had approached with the utmost delicacy; for, according to Sir Henry, all young men—at least, all good-looking ones—were fools and oafs whom he was not going to have woundinghisbirds. She agreed with him entirely, but reminded him of the duchess's solemn injunction to bring a party of even numbers.
Sir Henry at last gave in so far as to propose an elderly colonel. Madeleine inturn suggested Lord Hemsworth, who was allowed to be "a good sort," and was invited.
"Then we ought to have Miss Di Tempest, if we have Hemsworth," said Sir Henry, blowing like a grampus, as his manner was in moments of inspiration. "I'm quite a matchmaker now I'm married myself. Ask her to meet him, Maddy. She's your special pal, ain't she?"
Madeleine felt that she required strength greater than her own to bear with a person who says "ain't" and "a good sort," and designates a lady-friend as a "pal."
She pressed the silver knob of her pencil to her lips. There was, she remarked, no one whom she would like to have so much as Di; but Mr. Lumley was her next suggestion, and Sir Henry slapped himself on the leg, and said he was the very thing.
"We want one other man," said Madeleine,reflectively, after a few more had passed through the needle's eye of Sir Henry's criticism. "Let me see. Oh, there's Captain Tempest. He dances well."
"I won't have him," said Sir Henry at once, his eyes assuming their most prawnlike expression. "You may have his cousin if you like, the owl with the jowl, as Lumley calls him—Tempest of Overleigh."
"He is sure to be asked to the house itself, being a relation," said Madeleine, dropping the subject of Archie instantly. She did not recur to it again. But after their return home from the visit to the Hemsworths', at which she had met Di, she told her husband she had invited Di for the fancy ball, as he had wished her to do.
"Me?" said Sir Henry, reddening. "Lord bless me, what do I want with her?" And it was some time before he could be made to recollect what he had said nearly amonth ago about asking Di to meet Lord Hemsworth.
"You forget your own wishes more quickly than I do," she said, putting her hand in his.
He did, by Jove, he did; and he bent over the little hand and kissed it, while she noticed how red the back of his neck was. When he became unusually apoplectic in appearance, as at this moment, Madeleine always caught a glimpse of herself as a young widow, and the idea softened her towards him. If he were once really gone, without any possibility of return, she felt that she could have said, "Poor Henry!"
"The only awkward part about having asked Di," said Madeleine, after a pause, "is that Mrs. Courtenay does not allow her to visit alone."
"Well, my dear, ask Mrs. Courtenay. I like her. She has always been very civil to me."
She had indeed.
"I don't like her very much myself," said Madeleine. "She is so worldly; and I think she has made Di so. And she would be the only older person. You know you decided it should be ayoungparty this time. It is very awkward Di not being able to come alone, at her age. She evidently wanted me to ask her brother to bring her, who, she almost told me, was anxious to meet Miss Crupps, the carpet heiress; but I did not quite like to ask him without your leave."
"Ask him by all means," said Sir Henry, entirely oblivious of his former refusal. "After that poor little girl, is he? Well, we'll sit out together, and watch the lovemaking, eh?"
Madeleine experienced a tremor wholly unmixed with compunction at gaining her point. She would have been aware, if she had read it in a book, that any one who hadacted as she had done, had departed from the truth in suggesting that Di could not visit alone. She would have felt also that it was reprehensible in the extreme to invite to her house a man who had secretly, though not without provocation, made love to her since her marriage.
But just in the same way that what we regret as conceit in others we perceive to be a legitimate self-respect in ourselves, so Madeleine, as on previous occasions, "saw things very differently."
She was incapable of what she called "a low view." She had often "frankly" told herself that she took a deep interest in Archie. She had put his initials against some of her favourite passages in her morocco manual. She prayed for him on his birthday, and sometimes, when she woke up and looked at her luminous cross at night. She believed that she had a great influencefor good over him which it was her duty to use. She was sincere in her wish to proselytize, but the sincerity of an insincere nature is like the kernel of a deaf nut; a mere shred of undeveloped fibre. What Madeleine wished to believe became a reality to her. Gratification of a very common form of vanity was a religious duty. She wrote to Archie with a clear conscience, and, when he accepted, had a box of autumn hats down from London.
"Oh, Love's but a dance,Where Time plays the fiddle!See the couples advance,—Oh, Love's but a dance!A whisper, a glance,—'Shall we twirl down the middle?'Oh, Love's but a dance,Where Time plays the fiddle!"Austin Dobson.
"Oh, Love's but a dance,Where Time plays the fiddle!See the couples advance,—Oh, Love's but a dance!A whisper, a glance,—'Shall we twirl down the middle?'Oh, Love's but a dance,Where Time plays the fiddle!"Austin Dobson.
IIT was the night of the fancy dress ball.
The carriages were already at the door, and could be heard crunching round and round upon the gravel. Sir Henry, all yeomanry red and gold, was having the bursting hooks and eyes at his throat altered in his wife's room. Something had to bedone to his belt, too. At last he went blushing downstairs before the cluster of maids with his sword under his arm. The guests, who had gone up to dress after an early dinner, were reappearing by degrees. Lord Hemsworth, in claret-coloured coat and long Georgian waistcoat and tie-wig, came down, handsome and quiet as usual, with his young sister, whose imagination had stopped short at cotton-wool snowflakes on a tulle skirt. An impecunious young man in a red hunt coat rushed in, hooted on the stairs by Mr. Lumley for having come without a wedding garment. Madeleine sailed down in Watteau costume. Two married ladies followed in Elizabethan ones. Presently Archie made his appearance, a dream of beauty in white satin from head to foot, as the Earl of Leicester, his curling hair, fair to whiteness, looking like the wig which it was not. Every one, men and women alike,turned to look at him; and Mr. Lumley, following in harlequin costume, was quite overlooked, until he turned a somersault, saying, "Here we are again!" whereat Sir Henry instantly lost a hook and eye in a cackle of admiration.
"We ought to be starting," said Madeleine. "We are all down now."
"Not quite all," said Mr. Lumley, sinking on one knee, as Di came in crowned and sceptred, in a green and silver gown edged with ermine.
Lord Hemsworth drew in his breath. Madeleine's face fell.
"Good gracious, Di!" she said, with a very thin laugh. "This is dressing up indeed!"
The party, already late, got under way, Mr. Lumley, of course, calling in falsetto to each carriage in turn not to go without him, and then refusing to enter any vehicle inwhich, as he expressed it, Miss Tempest was not already an ornamental fixture.
"This is getting beyond a joke," said Lord Hemsworth, as a burst of song issued from the carriage leaving the door, and the lamp inside showed Di's crowned head, Sir Henry's violet complexion, and the gutta-percha face of the warbling Mr. Lumley.
Di sat very silent in her corner, and after a time, as the drive was a long one, the desultory conversation dropped, and Sir Henry fell into a nasal slumber, from which, as Madeleine was in another carriage, no one attempted to rouse him.
Di shut her eyes as a safeguard against being spoken to, and her mind went back to the subject which had been occupying much of her thoughts since the previous evening, namely, the fact that she should meet John at the ball. She knew he would be there, for she had seen him get out ofthe train at Alvery station the afternoon before.
As she had found on a previous occasion, when they had suddenly been confronted with each other at Doncaster races, to meet John had ceased to be easy to her—became more difficult every time.
Possibly John had found it as difficult to speak to Di as she had found it to receive him. But however that may have been, it would certainly have been impossible to divine that he was awaiting the arrival of any one to-night with the faintest degree of interest. He did not take his stand where it would be obvious that he could command a view of the door through which the guests entered. He had seen others do that on previous occasions, and had observed that the effect was not happy. Nevertheless, from the bay window where he was watching the dancing, the guests as they arrived were visible to him.
"He! he!" said Lord Frederick, joining him. "Such a row in the men's cloak-room! Young Talbot has come as Little Bo-Peep, and the men would not have him in their room; said it was improper, and tried to hustle him into the ladies' room. He is still swearing in his ulster in the passage. Why aren't you dancing?"
"I can't. My left arm is weak since I burned it in the spring."
"Well," rejoined Lord Frederick, who as a French marquis, with cane and snuff-box, was one of the best-dressed figures in the room, "you don't miss much. Onlookers see most of the game. Look at that fairy twirling with the little man in the kilt. Their skirts are just the same length. The worst part of this species of entertainment is that one cuts one's dearest friends. Some one asked me just now whether the 'Mauvaise Langue' was here to-night. Did notrecognize the wolf in sheep's clothing. More arrivals. A Turk and a Norwegian peasant, and a man in a smock frock. And—now—what on earth is the creature in blue and red, with a female to match?"
"Otter-hounds," suggested John.
"Is it possible? Never saw it before. There goes Freemantle as a private in the Blues, saluting as he is introduced, instead of bowing. What a fund of humour the youth of the present day possess! Who is that bleached earwig he is dancing with?"
"I think it is Miss Crupps, the heiress."
"H'm! Might have known it. That is the sort of little pill that no one takes unless it is very much gilt. Here comes the Verelst party at last. Lady Verelst has put herself together well. I would not mind buying her at my valuation and selling her at her own. She hates me, that little painted saint. I always cultivate a genuinesaint. I make a point of it. They may look deuced dowdy down here—they generally do, though I believe it is only their wings under their clothes; but they will probably form the aristocracy up yonder, and it is as well to know them beforehand. But Lady Verelst is a sham, and I hate shams. I am a sham myself. He! he! When last I met her she talked pious, and implied intimacy with the Almighty, till at last I told her that it was the vulgarest thing in life to be always dragging in your swell acquaintance. He! he! I shall go and speak to her directly she has done introducing her party. Mrs. Dundas—and—I don't know the other woman. Who is the girl in white?"
"Miss Everard."
"What! Hemsworth's sister? Then he will be here too, probably. I like Hemsworth. There's no more harm in that youngman than there is in a tablet of Pears' soap. A crowned head next. Why, it's Di Tempest. By —— she is handsomer every time I see her! If that girl knew how to advertise herself, she might become a professional beauty."
"Heaven forbid!" said John, involuntarily, watching Di with the intense concentration of one who has long pored over memory's dim portrait, and now corrects it by the original.
Lord Frederick did not see the look. For once something escaped him. He too was watching Di, who with the remainder of the Verelst party was being drifted towards them by a strong current of fresh arrivals in their wake.
The usual general recognition and non-recognition peculiar to fancy balls ensued, in which old acquaintances looked blankly at each other, gasped each other's names, and then shook hands effusively; amid whichone small greeting between two people who had seen and recognized each other from the first instant took place, and was over in a moment.
"I cannot recognize any one," said Di, her head held a shade higher than usual, looking round the room, and saying to herself, "He would not have spoken to me if he could have helped it."
"Some of the people are unrecognizable," said John, with originality equal to hers, and stung by the conviction that she had tried to avoid shaking hands with him.
The music struck up suddenly as if it were a new idea.
"Are you engaged for this dance?" said Mr. Lumley, flying to her side.
"Yes," said Di with decision.
"So am I," said he, and was gone again.
"Dance?" said aSporting Times, rushingup in turn, and shooting out the one word like a pea from a pop-gun.
"Thanks, I should like to, but I am not allowed," said Di. "My grandmother is very particular. If you had been theSunday at HomeI should have been charmed."
The "Pink 'un" expostulated vehemently, and said he would have come as theChurch Timesif he had only known; but Di remained firm.
John walked away, pricking himself with his little dagger, the sheath of which had somehow got lost, and watched the knot of men who gradually gathered round Di. Presently she moved away with Lord Frederick in the direction of Madeleine, who had installed herself at the further end of the room among thefenders, as our latter-day youth gracefully designates the tiaras of the chaperones.
John was seized upon and introduced toan elderly minister with an order, who told him he had known his father, and began to sound him as to his political views. John, who was inured to this form of address, answered somewhat vaguely, for at that moment Di began to dance. She had a partner worthy of her in the shape of a sedate young Russian, resplendent in the white-and-gold uniform of the imperialGardes à cheval.
Lord Frederick gravitated back to John. No young man among the former's large acquaintance was given the benefit of his experience more liberally than John. Lord Frederick took an interest in him which was neither returned nor repelled.
"Elver is down at last," he said. "It seems he had to wait till his mother's maid could be spared to sew him into his clothes. It is a pity you are not dancing, John. You might dance with your cousin. She andPrince Blazinski made a splendid couple. What a crowd of moths round that candle! I hope you are not one of them. It is not the candle that gets singed. Another set of arrivals. Look at Carruthers coming in with a bouquet. Cox of theMonarchstill, I suppose. He can't dance with it; no, he has given it to his father to hold. Supper at last. I must go and take some one in."
John took Miss Everard in to supper. In spite of her brother's and Di's efforts, she had not danced much. She did not find him so formidable as she expected, and before supper was over had told him all about her doves, and how the grey one sat on her shoulder, and how she loved poetry better than anything in the world, except "Donovan." John proved a sympathetic listener. He in his turn confided to her his difficulty in conveying soup over the edge of his ruff; and after providing her with a pink cream,judging with intuition unusual to his sex that a pink cream is ever more acceptable to young ladyhood than a white one, he took her back to the ball-room. The crowd had thinned. The kilt and the fairy and a few other couples were careering wildly in open space. John looked round in vain for Madeleine, to whom he could deliver up his snowflake, and catching sight of Mrs. Dundas on the chaperon's dais, made in her direction. Di, who was sitting with Mrs. Dundas, suddenly perceived them coming up the room together. What was it, what could it be, that indescribable feeling that went through her like a knife as she saw Miss Everard on John's arm, smiling at something he was saying to her? Had they been at supper together all this long time?
"What a striking face your cousin has!" said Mrs. Dundas. "I do not wonder that people ask who he is. I used to think himrather alarming, but Miss Everard does not seem to find him so."
"He can be alarming," said Di, lightly. "You should see him when he is discussing his country's weal, or welcoming his guests."
"Why did I say that?" she asked herself the moment the words were out of her mouth. "It's ill-natured and it's not true. Why did I say it?"
Mrs. Dundas laughed.
"It's the old story," she said. "One never sees the virtues of one's relations. Now, as he is notmyfirst cousin, I am able to perceive that he is a very remarkable person, with a jaw that means business. There is tenacity and strength of purpose in his face. He would be a terrible person to oppose."
Di laughed, but she quailed inwardly.
"I am told he is immensely run after," continued Mrs. Dundas. "I dare say youknow," in a whisper, "that the duchess wants him for Lady Alice, and theysayhe has given her encouragement, but I don't believe it. Anyhow, her mother is making her read up political economy and Bain, poor girl. It must be an appalling fate to marry a great intellect. I am thankful to say Charlie only had two ideas in his head; one was chemical manures, and the other was to marry me. Well, Miss Everard. Lady Verelst is at supper, but I will extend a wing over you till she returns. Here comes a crowd from the supper-room. Now, Miss Tempest, do go in. You owned you were hungry a minute ago, though you refused the tragic entreaties of the Turk and the stage villain."
"I was afraid," said Di; "for though the villain is my esteemed friend in private life, I know his wide hat or the turban of the infidel would catch in my crown and dragit from my head. I wish I had not come so regally. I enjoyed sewing penny rubies into my crown, and making the ermine out of an old black muff and some rabbit-fur; but—uneasy is the head that wears a crown."
"I am very harmless and inaggressive," said John, in his most level voice. "The only person I prick with my little dagger is myself. If you are hungry, I think you may safely go in to supper with me."
"Very well," said Di, rising and taking his offered arm. "I am too famished to refuse."
"She is taller than he is," said Miss Everard, as they went together down the rapidly filling room.
"No, my dear; it is only her crown. They are exactly the same height."
No one is more useful in everyday lifethan the man, seldom a rich man, who can command two sixpences, and can in an emergency produce a threepenny bit and some coppers. The capitalist with his halfcrown is nowhere—for the time.
In conversation, small change is everything. Who does not know the look of the clever man in society, conscious of a large banking account, but uncomfortably conscious also that, like Goldsmith, he has not a sixpence of ready money? And who has not envied the fool jingling his few halfpence on a tombstone or anywhere, to the satisfaction of himself and every one else?
Thrice-blessed is small-talk.
But between some persons it is an impossibility, though each may have a very respectable stock of his own. Like different coinages, they will not amalgamate. Di and John had not wanted any in talking to each other—till now. And now, in their hour ofneed, to the alarm of both, they found they were destitute. After a short mental struggle they succumbed into the abyss of the commonplace, the only neutral ground on which those who have once been open and sincere with each other can still meet—to the certain exasperation of both.
John was dutifully attentive. He procured a fresh bottle of champagne for her, and an unnibbled roll, and made suitable remarks at intervals; but her sense of irritation increased. Something in his manner annoyed her. And yet it was only the same courteous, rather expressionless manner that she remembered was habitual to him towards others. Now that it was gone she realized that there had once been a subtle difference in his voice and bearing to herself. She felt defrauded of she knew not what, and the wing of cold pheasant before her loomed larger and larger, till it seemed to stretchover the whole plate. Why on earth had she said she was hungry? And why had he brought her to the large table, where there was so much light and noise, and where she was elbowed by an enormous hairy Buffalo Bill, when she had seen as she came in that one of the little tables for two was at that instant vacant? She forgot that when she first caught sight of it she had said within herself that she would never forgive him if he had the bad taste to entrap her into atête-à-têteby taking her there.
But he had shown at once that he had no such intention. Was this dignified, formal man, with his air of distinction, and his harsh immobile face, and his black velvet dress,—was this stranger really the John with whom she had been on such easy terms six weeks ago; the John who, pale and determined, had measured swords with her in the dusk of a September evening?
And as she sat beside him in the brilliant light, amid the Babel of tongues, a voice in her heart said suddenly, "That was not the end; that was only the beginning—only the beginning."
Her eyes met his, fixed inquiringly upon her. He was only offering her some grapes, but it appeared to her that he must have heard the words, and a sense of impotent terror seized her, as the terror of one who, wrestling for his life, finds at the first throw that he is overmatched.
She rose hastily, and asked to go back to the ball-room. He complied at once, but did not speak. They went, a grave and silent couple, through the hall and down the gallery.
"Have I annoyed you?" he said at last, as they neared the ball-room.
She did not answer.
"I mean, have I done anything more that has annoyed you?"
"Nothing more, thanks."
"I am glad," said John. "I feared I had. Of course, I would not have asked you to go in to supper with me if Mrs. Dundas had not obliged me. I intended to ask you to do so, when you could have made some excuse for refusing if you did not wish it. I was sorry to force your hand."
"You will never do that," said Di, to her own astonishment. It seemed to her that she was constrained by a power stronger than herself to defy him.
She felt him start.
"We will take another turn," he said instantly; and before she had the presence of mind to resist, they had turned and were walking slowly down the gallery again between the rows of life-size figures of knights and chargers in armour, which loomed gigantic in the feeble light. A wave of music broke in the distance, and the fewcouples sitting in recesses rose and passed them on their way back to the ball-room, leaving the gallery deserted.
A peering moon had laid a faint criss-cross whiteness on the floor.
The place took a new significance.
Each was at first too acutely conscious of being alone with the other to speak. She wondered if he could feel how her hand trembled on his arm, and he whether it was possible she did not hear the loud hammering of his heart. Either would have died rather than have betrayed their emotion to the other.
"You tell me I shall never force your hand," he repeated slowly at last. "No, indeed, I trust I never shall. But when, may I ask, have I shown any intention of doing so?"
Di had put herself so palpably and irretrievably in the wrong, that she had norefuge left but silence. She was horror-struck by his repetition of the words which her lips, but surely not she herself, had spoken.
"If you ever marry me," said John, "it will be of your own accord. If you don't, we shall both miss happiness—you as well as I, for we are meant for each other. Most people are so constituted that they can marry whom they please, but you and I have no choice. We have a claim upon each other. I recognize yours, with thankfulness. I did not know life held anything so good. You ignore mine, and wilfully turn away from it. I don't wonder. I am not a man whom any woman would choose, much lessyou. It is natural on your part to dislike me—at first. In the mean while you need not distress yourself by telling me so. I am under no delusion on that point."
His voice was firm and gentle. If it hadbeen cold, Di's pride would have flamed up in a moment. As it was, its gentleness, under great and undeserved provocation, made her writhe with shame. She spoke impulsively.
"But Iamdistressed, I can't help being so, at having spoken so harshly; no—worsethan harshly, so unpardonably."
"There is no question of pardon between you and me," said John, turning to look at her with the grave smile that seemed for a moment to bring back her old friend to her; but only for a moment. His eyes contradicted it. "I know you have never forgiven me for telling you that I loved you, but nevertheless you see I have not asked pardon yet, though I had not intended to annoy you by speaking of it again—at present."
"No," said Di, eagerly. "But that is just it. It was my own fault this time. Ibrought it on myself. But—but I can't help knowing—I feel directly I see you that you are still thinking of it. And then I become angry, and say dreadful things like——"
"Exactly," said John, nodding.
"Because I—not only because I am ill-tempered, but because though I do like being liked, still I don't want you or any one to make a mistake, or go on making it. It doesn't seem fair."
"Not if it really is a mistake."
"It is in this instance."
"Not on my part."
There was a short silence. Di felt as if she had walked up against a stone wall.
"John," she said with decision. "Believe me. I sometimes mean what I say, and I mean it now. I really and truly am a person who knows my own mind."
"So do I," said John.
Rather a longer silence.
"And—and oh, John! Don't you see how wretched, how foolish it is, our being on these absurd formal terms? Have you forgotten what friends we used to be? I have not. It makes me angry still when I think how you have taken yourself away for nothing, and how all the pleasure is gone out of meeting you or talking to you. I don't think you half knew how much I liked you."
"Di," said John, stopping short, and facing her with indignation in his eyes, "I desire that you will never again tell me youlikeme. I really cannot stand it. Let us go back to the ball-room."