Diana Tempest Volume I Part 7

Madeleine gave the sigh that accompanies relaxation from intense mental strain.

"I will decide on the mauve," she said.

CHAPTER VI.

"Ready money of affection Pay, whoever drew the bill."

CLOUGH.

"Put not your trust in brothers," said Di, coming in from a balcony after the departure of the bride and bridegroom, and looking round the crowded drawing-room, where the fict.i.tious gaiety of a wedding was more or less dismally stamped on every face. "I do believe Archie has deserted me."

"I know he has," said her companion. "He told me half an hour ago that he was going to bolt."

"Did he? The deceiver! He gave me a solemn promise that he would see me home. I believe young men are the root of all evil. Don't pin your faith to them, Lord Hemsworth, or you will live to rue it, like me."

"I won't."

"And why, pray, did not you mention the fact that he was going when I was laboriously explaining all the presents to you, and exhausting myself in pointing out watches in bracelets or concealed in the handles of umbrellas, which you were quite unable to see for yourself? One good turn deserves another. Ah! now the people are really beginning to go. Is not that Lady Breakwater in the inner drawing-room? Poor woman--I mean, happy mother! I will try and get near her to say good-bye. Look at her smiling; I think I should know a wedding smile anywhere."

"No, you need not see me home," she added a few minutes later, as she stood in the hall. "Have I not a hired brougham? One throws expense to the winds on an occasion of this kind. There comes your hansom behind it. What a lovely chestnut! How I do envy you it! The blessings of this world are very unevenly distributed. Good-bye."

"I am going to see you home," said Lord Hemsworth, with decision. "It is the duty of the best man to make himself generally useful to the chief bridesmaid. I've read it in my little etiquette book; and, however painful my duty may be made to me, I shall perform it."

"You have performed it thoroughly already. No, you are not coming in.

Don't shut the door on my gown, please. Thanks. Home, coachman."

"Are you going to the Speaker's to-night?" said Lord Hemsworth, with his arms on the carriage-door, perfectly regardless of the string of carriages behind him.

"I am."

"Good luck; so am I."

"That's not in the etiquette book," said Di, with mischief in her eyes.

"In the meantime you are stopping the whole procession. We have shaken hands once already. Good-bye again."

Mrs. Courtenay was sitting in her armchair with her back to the light in the long sunny drawing-room of her little house in Kensington, waiting for the return of her granddaughter from the wedding to which at the last moment she had been unable to escort her herself. Her headache was better now, and she had taken up her work, the fine elaborate lace work in imitation of an old design which she had copied in some Italian church.

Mrs. Courtenay had been one of the four beautiful Miss Digbys of Ebberstone about whom society had gone wild fifty years ago; and in her old age she was beautiful still, with the dignified and gracious manner of one who has been wors.h.i.+pped in her day. Her calm keen face bore the marks of much suffering, but of suffering that had been outlived.

Perhaps next to the death of her husband, who had left her in her early youth to struggle with life alone, the blow which she had felt most keenly had been the clandestine and most miserable marriage of her only daughter with Colonel Tempest; but it was all past now. People while they are undergoing the strain of the ordinary ills that flesh is heir to, the bitterness of inadequately returned love, the loss or alienation of children, the grind of poverty or the hydra-headed wants of insufficient wealth, are not as a rule pleasant or sympathetic companions. The lessons of life are coming too quickly upon them to allow of it. They are preoccupied. But _tout pa.s.se_. Mrs. Courtenay had loved and had suffered, and had presented a brave front to the world, and had known wealth, as she now knew poverty. The pain was past; the experience remained; therein lay the secret of her power and her popularity, for she had both. She seemed to have reached a little quiet backwater in the river of life where the pressure of the current could no longer reach her, would never reach her again. She sometimes said that nothing could affect her very deeply now, except, perhaps, what affected her granddaughter. But that was a large exception. Mrs.

Courtenay loved her granddaughter with some of the stern tender affection which she had once lavished on her own daughter--which she had buried in her grave. The elder Diana had taken two hearts down to the grave with her--her mother's and Mr. Tempest's.

Mrs. Courtenay had that rarest gift--

"A heart at leisure from itself To soothe and sympathize."

To that little house in Kensington many came, long before her beautiful granddaughter was of an age to be its princ.i.p.al attraction, as she had now become. Mrs. Courtenay's house had gained the magic name of being agreeable, possibly because she made it so to one and all alike. None but the pus.h.i.+ng and the dictatorial were ever overlooked. Country relations with the loud voices and the abusive political views peculiar to rural life were her worst bugbears, but even they had a pleasing suspicion that they had distinguished themselves in conversation, and departed with the gratified feeling akin to that depicted on a plain woman's face when she has come out well in a photograph.

In talking with the young Mrs. Courtenay remembered her own far-away youth, its romantic pa.s.sions, its watchful nights, its splendour of sunrise illusions. She remembered, too, its great ignorance, and was not, like so many elders, exasperated with the young for having omitted to learn, before they came into the world, what they themselves only learned by living half a century in it.

She had sympathy with old and young alike, but perhaps she felt most deeply for those who were struggling in the meshes of middle age, no longer interesting to others or even to themselves. Many came to Mrs.

Courtenay for comfort and sympathy in the servitude with hard labour of middle age, and none came in vain.

Mrs. Courtenay lifted her calm clear eyes to the Louis Quatorze clock on the old Venetian cabinet near her.

"Di is late," she said half aloud.

The low sun was thinking better of it, and was s.h.i.+ning in through the tracery of the bare branches of the trees outside. If there was ever a ray of suns.h.i.+ne anywhere, it was in that little Kensington drawing-room.

The sun never forgot to seek it out, to come and have a look at the little possessions which in spite of her narrow means Mrs. Courtenay had gradually gathered round her. It came now, and touched the white _Capo di Monte_ figures on the mantelpiece, and brought into momentary prominence the inlaid ivory dolphins on the ebony cabinet; those dolphins with curly tails which two Dianas had loved at the age when permission to drive dolphins and sit on waves was not a final impossibility though denied for the moment. It lighted up the groups of Lowestoft china, and the tall Oriental jars which Mrs. Courtenay suffered no one to dust but herself. The little bits of old silver and enamel on the black polished table caught the light. So did the daffodils in the green Vallauris tripod. They blazed against the shadowed pictured wall. The quiet room was full of light.

Presently a carriage stopped at the door, the bell rang, and a moment later a swift light step mounted the stair, and Di came in, tall and radiant in her flowing white and yellow draperies, her bouquet of mimosa in her hand.

She was beautiful, with the beauty that is recognized at once. Beauty is so rare nowadays and prettiness so common, that the terms are often confused and misapplied, and the most ordinary good looks usurp the name of beauty. But between prettiness and beauty there is nevertheless a great gulf fixed. No one had ever called Di a pretty girl. At one and twenty she was a beautiful woman, with that nameless air of distinction which can enn.o.ble the plainest face and figure.

She had a right to beauty from both parents, and resembled both of them to a certain degree. She had the tall splendid figure of the Tempests with their fair skin and pale golden hair, waving back thick and burnished from her low white forehead. But she had her mother's dark unfathomable eyes with the long dark eyelashes, and her mother's features with their inherent n.o.bility and strength, which were so entirely lacking in the Tempests--at least, in the present generation of them. Some people, women mostly, said there was too much contrast between her dark eyes and eyebrows and the extreme fairness of her complexion and hair. Men, however, did not think so. They saw that she was beautiful, and that was enough. Indeed, it was too much for some of them. Women said, also, that her features were too large, that she was on too large a scale altogether. No doubt that accounted for the fact that she was seldom overlooked.

"Well, Granny, and how is the headache?" she asked gaily, pulling off her long gloves and instantly beginning to unwire the mimosa in her bouquet with rapid, capable white hands.

"Oh! the headache is gone," said Mrs. Courtenay, watching her granddaughter. "And how did it all go off?"

"Perfectly," said Di, in her clear gay voice. "Madeleine looked beautiful, and often as I have been bridesmaid I never stood behind a bride with a better fitting back. I suppose the survival of the best fitted is what we are coming to in these days. Anyhow, Madeleine attained to it. It was a well done thing altogether. The altar one ma.s.s of white peonies! White peonies at Easter! Sir Henry was the only red one there. And eight of us all youth and innocence in white and amber to bear her company. We bridesmaids were all waiting for her for some time before she arrived or he either; but Lord Hemsworth marched him in at last, just when I was beginning to hope he would not turn up. I have seen him look worse, Granny. He did not look so very bald until he knelt down, and I have known his nose redder. To a friend I dare say it only looked like a blush that had lost its way. He is a stout man to outline himself in a white waistcoat, but I thought on the whole he looked well."

"Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, with her little inward laugh, "you should not say such things."

"Oh yes, I can say anything I like to you," said Di. "Dear me, I am sitting on my new amber sas.h.!.+ What extravagance! It will be long enough before I have another. It was really good of Lady Breakwater to give me the whole turn-out. We never could have afforded it."

"Did Madeleine look unhappy?"

"No; she was pale, but perfectly collected, and she walked quite firmly to the chancel steps where the security for fifteen thousand a year and two diamond tiaras and a pendant was awaiting her. The security looked a little nervous."

"Di," said Mrs. Courtenay, with an effort after severity, "never again let me hear you laugh at the man who once did you the honour to ask you to marry him. You show great want of feeling."

Di's face changed. It became several degrees sterner than her grandmother's. That peculiar concentrated light came into her soft lovely eyes which is a life-long puzzle to those who can see only one aspect of a character, and whose ideas are consequently thrown into the wildest confusion by a change of expression. There was at times an appearance of intensity of feeling about Di which sometimes gleamed up into her eyes and gave a certain tremor to her low voice, that surprised and almost frightened those who regarded her only as a charming but somewhat eccentric woman. Di's best friends said they did not understand her. The little foot-rule by which they measured others did not seem to apply to her. She was grave or gay, cynical or tender, frivolous or sympathetic, according to the mood of the hour, or according as her quick intuition and sense of mischief showed her the exact opposite was expected of her. But behind the various moods which naturally high spirits led her into for the moment, keener eyes could see that there was always something kept back--something not suffered to be discussed and commented on by the crowd--namely, herself. Her frank, cordial manner might deceive the many, but others who knew her better were conscious of a great reserve--of a barrier beyond which they might not pa.s.s; of locked rooms in that sunny, hospitable house into which no one was invited, into which she had, perhaps, as yet rarely penetrated herself.

Mrs. Courtenay possibly understood her better than any one, but Di took her by surprise now. She laid down her flowers and came and stood before her grandmother.

"Do I show want of feeling?" she said, in her low, even voice. "I know I have none for that man; but why should I have any? If he wanted to marry me, why did he want it? He knew I did not like him--I made that sufficiently plain. Did he care one single straw for anything about me except my looks? If he had liked me ever so little, it would have been different; but why am I to be grateful because he wanted me to sit at the head of his table, and wear his diamonds?"

"You talk as young and silly girls with romantic ideas do talk," replied Mrs. Courtenay, piqued into making a.s.sertions exactly contrary to her real opinions. "I fancied you had more sense! Madeleine did a wise thing in accepting him. She has made a very prudent marriage."

"Yes," said Di, moving slowly away and sitting down by the window--"that is just it. I wonder if there is anything in the whole wide world so recklessly imprudent as a prudent marriage? But what am I talking about?" she added, lightly. "It is not a marriage; it is merely a social contract. I can't see why they went to church myself, or what the peonies and that nice little newly-ironed Bishop were for. They were quite unnecessary. A register-office and a clerk would have done just as well, and have been more in keeping. But how silly it is of me to be wasting my time in holding forth when your cap is not even trimmed for this evening. The price of a virtuous woman is above rubies nowadays.

Nothing but diamonds and settlements will secure a first-rate article.

And now, to come back to more serious subjects, will you wear your diamond stars, G"--("G" was the irreverent pet name by which Di sometimes called her grandmother)--"or shall I fasten that little marabou feather with your pearl clasp into the point-lace cap? It wants something at the side."