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